Not small dogs: quick wins to make your clinic more cat friendly

Feline emotions

There’s no denying that cats are sentient beings, but using terms such as ‘spicy’, ‘angry’ and ‘evil’ do our feline friends no favours. It also shows that the person using these terms doesn’t understand the underlying feline emotions that lead to these behaviours or that the way they have interacted with the cat has aroused or increased these emotions. We need to rethink this; not only for cat welfare, but also to prevent setting bad examples to others.

Using the Heath model (created by Dr Sarah Heath), we should adapt our terminology to reflect the true emotions of the cat. Your ‘spicy’ or ‘evil’ cat is most likely petrified by you and the alien situation it finds itself in. It isn’t possessed by the devil and doesn’t have it in for you – it’s purely trying to tell you that it’s really scared and is acting in a way to protect itself! If we now think of this same cat as being scared, then we suddenly have more empathy and change our mindset on how to interact with it.

So, there it is – your first step to being cat friendly. Change your thinking and your interactions with cats and make the world of difference in your clinic. And guess what? Your colleagues will notice the positive effects and want a bit of the action too! Suddenly you are the ‘cat person’ in your clinic that they all look up to. Find out more.

Pre-visit advice

An appointment starts in your consulting room, right? Wrong. Before the cat even enters the clinic, it is likely to have already been forced into a cat carrier and transported in a noisy, smelly, moving tin can that we call a car.

What advice do you give caregivers on bringing their cat to the clinic? None, I hear you cry? This is such an easy win – use your website and social media to educate caregivers on selecting the best cat carrier, transporting their cat and even how to train them to be comfortable in the carrier. The good news is that you don’t need to create all these resources – International Cat Care have a great selection of leaflets, social media posts and videos ready for you to share.

Cat Carer Guide - https://icatcare.org/advice-cat-carer-guides/
Social media posts - https://icatcare.org/international-cat-day/
Videos - https://catfriendlyclinic.org/cat-owners/getting-your-cat-to-the-vet/

The waiting room

Is your waiting room designed for your clients? Lots of nice seating, pretty pictures on the wall, eye-catching toys and treats? Whilst we want our clients to feel comfortable, we really should be designing our waiting rooms around the species we are treating. This means separating cats and dogs so they can, at the very least, not see each other (but ideally not hear or smell them either!).

Use items you have in your clinic already as visual barriers to create a cat corner. Bookshelves, food stands, large plants; the list is as long as your imagination. Provide clean, feline pheromone sprayed, covers for carriers, and make sure you tell clients to use them – a verbal cue by reception staff as well as clear signage should get the message across. There are lots of tips for all areas of the clinic.

Start your Cat Friendly Clinic journey

To find out what else you can do in your clinic to make it Cat Friendly, check out the Cat Friendly Clinic website. Every little helps, so even if you can only make one small change you will benefitting cats in your clinic. But why not see what else you can do? You never know, you may even be able to become an ISFM accredited Cat Friendly Clinic!