Good evening, everyone. My name is Charlotte, and thank you for joining us for tonight's webinar, Beline Microchipping, taking a cat friendly approach to the new legal requirement presented by Sarah He. Today's webinar has been kindly spent sponsored by Identi, so a big thank you to Identi for making today possible.

Identity offers the full pet protection journey. Identity chip provide a range of ISO standard microchips to suit the practise needs. Identity Base is one of the UK's largest and longest established pet microchipping databases.

With a professional team available 24/7, we continually support keepers throughout the lifetime of the pet. Any questions or queries you may have for identity, please see their email address, which will pop in the chat box for you. So a bit a bit about our speaker today.

Sarah He. Sarah qualified as a veterinary surgeon from Bristol University in 1988 and set up behavioural referrals veterinary practise in 1992. She sees clinical cases across Northwest England and wider afield or through video platform consultations.

In 2018, she was made a fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, for notorious contributions to the profession in recognition of her work establishing behavioural medicine. As a veterinary discipline. She is at RCBS and BBS, European veterinary specialist in behavioural medicine and an external lecturer in small animal behaviour medicine on the veterinary.

Specialist, a veterinary undergraduate course at the Liverpool University. In 2019, she gained her postgraduate certificate in veterinary education. Sarah has published many papers, books, and book chapters, and in 2016 was a co-author and co-editor of feline behavioural health and welfare published by Elseva.

She has special interest in interplay between emotional and physical illness in dogs and cats. And therefore, we are in great hands tonight with presenting with her presenting this webinar. I wish to let you all know that tonight's session will be recorded and available on playback, and you'll receive a certificate for tonight's attendance also.

Please use the Q&A box for any questions you may have for Sarah throughout the presentation. And at the end of today's session, we'll see if we can answer any of these questions you may have. If we run out of time with the questions submitted, we'll email out any responses to you in the next few days.

So with no further ado, I'd like to now hand over to Sarah to start this evening's session. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Charlotte.

It's great to be here this evening. Thanks to Webinar that for hosting. And also to all of you who've managed to come to the webinar on a busy, weekday evening.

I know you, when you've been in practise during the day, it's hard to go to, evening events. I really appreciate you, coming this evening. OK, so we're gonna be talking about a cat friendly approach to the microchipping appointment tonight.

So the learning outcomes are to understand the importance of cat friendly veterinary interactions, particularly in fulfilling the new feline microchipping legislation requirements, which we'll talk about, in a little bit of detail. And to do that, I'm going to look at it from three main angles. So recognising natural cat behaviours, what influences an individual in the way that they behave, to appreciate the emotional dimension of health, so that we can look at how that impacts on behavioural responses of feline patients.

And then to understand the application of emotional and cognitive health to having a successful cat friendly interaction. And that doesn't mean just successful from the feline perspective, but also from our perspective, bearing in mind that what we're dealing with in this context is something that is a legal requirement. So the job does have to get done.

So, what is this changing legislation? Obviously, I'm sure you're aware that on the 13th of March this year, there was an announcement to introduce compulsory microchipping for all owned cats. I prefer the term cared for cats, but I know what that means, because obviously it's not quite the same legal relationship as it is for dogs, but we're trying to move away generally from the word owning other species to caring for them.

But cats, under this new legislation need to be implanted with a microchip before they reach the age of 20 weeks. And then, of course, their contact details stored and kept up to date. That's probably one of the most important parts of microchipping, as we've found all too often with our canine companions that, keeping those records up to date in a pet microchipping database is going to be absolutely crucial.

And there's a window for compliance, because, obviously, there's a great number of cats out there who are not yet microchipped, and therefore, that we have this window up until the 10th of June 2024 for caregivers to comply with having their cats microchipped. And if they're found after that date, not to have microchipped their pets, they're gonna have 21 days to have one implanted, or face a fine of up to £500. So why, what's the aim?

Well, the aim that's stated in the legislation, if you look on the government website, is to make it easier for lost or stray pets to be reunited with their caregivers and returned home safely. And that's an aim that obviously we are very supportive of. And I think there are many benefits to having microchipping for our feline companions, but obviously this raises a new population of appointments that the veterinary profession is going to be faced with.

There's initially going to be two. That are going to be involved. So it said in that information I just gave you that they need to be microchipped before they're 2 weeks of age.

So new kittens up to 2 weeks of age are, from now on, going to be needing to be microchipped, and that's going to be an ongoing population. But there's also these older cats who are not yet microchipped, and they're going to be very important in this first batch. Now, I know that lots of practises are Already thinking about this and if cats are coming in for procedures needing sedation or general anaesthesia, it's an ideal time to offer that, microchipping er to that caregiver, obviously, they don't have to.

Apply yet until June 2024, but if they're being offered it at a time when the cat's already being sedated or or GA for some other procedure, then I think many caregivers are likely to take us up on that particular route. And the current advice of feline neutering recommends operating at 4 months of age, according to cats protection, so about 17 weeks. So implanting microchips in kittens less than 20 weeks of age can coincide quite usefully with lowering our routine neutering age to 4 months, and therefore can be performed under GAA in those kittens.

But there's also going to be kittens who are not being neutered, so, for example, breeding stock, and then they've got this population of older cats, not yet microchipped, who are not having any procedure that, lends itself to sedation or GA where this cat friendly approach to the appointment is really important for improving welfare for the patients, for the veterinary staff as well, but also to get the job done. So I'm gonna talk a lot this evening about the cat friendly interactions and therefore I want to just make some acknowledgements to International Cat Care, ISFM and AAFP because as you'll know, they've been involved in the cat friendly practise or cat friendly clinic scheme, depending on which side of the Atlantic you live on. And much of the information that I'll give you is going to be related to the work of those three organisations, and also, Ilona Rodden, who's a very dear friend and a colleague as well, so co-editor of the book that was mentioned by Charlotte earlier.

And so, some of the images as well that I'm using this evening come from Ilona or from Ilona's practise. So I just want to talk about the AFP ISFM guidelines so that we have a, a source of information for you to go to after this evening, get more information. So, back, in, 2011, I've got a strange thing on here that I can't get rid of off my screen.

There it goes. Back in 2011. We had the, AFP ISFM feline friendly handling guidelines.

And these have been superseded, in 2022 by the new guidelines. I don't know how many of you are already familiar with these, but these are called the cat-friendly veterinary Interaction guidelines. I'm sorry.

I knew I was gonna have this cough tonight. And the difference in the title. It's because of the fact that these guidelines talk about more than handling, and we'll talk about that as we go through tonight, that rather than just thinking about handling, we're thinking about interaction in terms of approach as well.

So, 57 references were involved in the 2011 guidelines. When we started to put together the 2022 guidelines, and you'll see the long list of people involved in the production of this particular document. That number of references increased to 153 references.

And that is really a way of illustrating just how much our knowledge about feline friendly approaches, as well as handling techniques have changed over that time period between 2011 and 2022, and how much more. Wealth of information we have with evidence as to why it's so important to have this sort of approach when we're interacting with cats. So, the idea of a cat friendly approach is to support what I term comprehensive healthcare, and that's based on this concept that health is a triad with these, aspects which are all interrelated with one another, and that providing healthcare for our patients involves optimising all three aspects.

And that's really the basis of the discipline of veterinary behavioural medicine. So these 3 equally important components are the physical health of the patient. And obviously when we're talking about microchipping appointments, we are probably not dealing with individuals who are unwell at the time of the consult in terms of having an acute illness.

But we will come back to physical health a little bit later. Because we can't dismiss the consideration of physical health when we're approaching and handling these individuals for these microchipping appointments, because, certainly in this first period, we're going to be doing this for cats of varying ages, and therefore chronic illnesses may be present. And then also cognitive health, so the way in which an individual learns and, alters its response, depending on, what it perceives about the environment, and then also their emotional health.

So what I want to look at is how we consider all of these, particularly emotional health, because that is the one that alters the response of the individual during the consults. And then we're going to talk about how that's important to remember when you're handling these individuals. So the relevance when interacting with patients relates to all three aspects.

So let's come back to that physical health, aspect for these microchip appointments. I think the main thing is our elderly patients. We know that a very large percentage of our feline patients over the age of 12, particularly up into the 90.

90+, maybe even as high as 98%, according to some studies of cats in that category are going to have discomfort due to degenerative joint disease. So it is important to think about physical health in patients, even if they're coming in for elective appointments such as microchipping. They may have undergoing, ongoing, physical health considerations, particularly things like pain, which do need to be taken into consideration before we start handling.

Because obviously if an individual does have discomfort from OADJD, the way in which we handle needs to be adjusted, or we need to think about whether we've dealt with that first, particularly microchipping is, as we're going to talk about, not, a life or death appointment, it needs to be done by a certain deadline date according to legislation, but we do have the option to prepare for the appointment. So if we do have an individual where we're wanting to give a microchip, but we find that they are suffering from pain, then at the moment, certainly, I mean, obviously it's gonna be slightly different as we get closer to the date deadline in 2024. But at the moment we.

Have got the chance to identify that the animal is in pain and therefore may find it difficult to be handled in order to administer an injection and therefore we can start them on appropriate pain relief and then have them back for the appointment at a later date. Also we have the emotional health to consider, and I'm going to talk about this in probably more detail tonight, considering valence, and for those of you who are not familiar with emotional health, valence is basically whether the individual has an emotion which is protective in nature, so an emotion. That is leading the individual to seek out a way of feeling safe and secure, or whether it's valence of emotion is engaging so that it is readily interacting with the veterinary staff in the consult, for example.

And then arousal is the other aspect of emotional health that we also need to consider. And then considering both of those aspects leads us to understanding the behavioural responses that the cat is showing during the consult. And then cognitive health is memories are formed during all interactions that we have.

And what we need to also remember is that the interactions during consults influence not only what happens during that consultation, but also what happens at future visits. And that can work in both directions with the microchip appointment. It can either be that we need to have some understanding of.

Previous appointments that this, cat has been to, and how that may be influencing their behaviour now. But also thinking how we manage the microchipping appointments may also lead to an influence on their future veterinary experience. And that becomes very relevant, of course, to the kitten population as we move into the microchipping of kittens less than 2 weeks of age.

So interaction style must always be considered for the individual patient, and that means that we need to be thinking about their current behavioural response. Well, how are they responding now in this consult, but also can we get information about their past history? Do we know whether this individual has got a history of coming in for certain types of appointments or behaving in a certain way when it's been in for previous interactions?

I'm gonna talk a little bit about the importance of a team approach, and this may sound, not to be important when we're just talking about a very specific thing of giving a microchip in a consultation, and we think, well, surely the people involved are the vet and or the vet nurse if if there's a vet nurse in the consult room at the time. But actually, when we think about having a successful consultation with the cat, it is important to remember that it's not just the personnel in the consult room that are important, it is a team approach because we'll we'll talk about, later, arousal has many components to it, not just what's happening in this consultation experience. But also things that have happened even at home, so the caregivers involved, and also what's happened prior to the actual consultation.

So, a cat friendly approach does need to involve all of the veterinary team. We need to think about the caregiver as well, particularly in terms of education. So we're gonna talk a little bit about consent-based care.

And, of course, it involves the patient. It involves the patient's cognition and the way they learn. So if we can work together and we can have the whole team, that's us as a veterinary team, the caregiver and the patient working together, then we're much more likely to have successful consent-based care during the veterinary experience.

So interactions, as I alluded to earlier with the change in the the title of the guidelines, involves non-physical as well as physical interactions. So it's more than just the way we handle the cat to actually administer the injection, it's about the whole consultation experience. So taking a cat friendly approach involves respecting the fact this is a cat, so we're gonna talk a little bit about species requirements and the cat as an individual.

So it involves achieving the required clinical outcome. In this case we've said it's a legal requirement. We've got going, we are going to have to get this job done.

And while there may be some different approaches like doing it under GA during neutering or offering it under sedation in GA in the months to come, for older cats, we know that some of these administrations are going to be taking place within a consultation situation. So the principles are tailoring the visit to the individual, helping the cat to cope with the microchipping experience, and making sure that the cat achieves a sense of both control, which is very important from the species specific perspective, and also a situation of feeling safe. And so we're gonna talk a lot about how we can change our interaction to increase that perception of safety.

And to do that, we need to understand their emotional state, because how we react to the cat will depend on which of the emotions are primarily governing the way in which that individual is behaving. So we're gonna start our consultation with non-physical interaction. Assessment from a distance, both from a physical and an emotional health perspective, is a very important part of a cat friendly approach.

And if we know the cat, if it's a cat that's familiar to us, comparing that assessment from a distance to their previous visits can also be very useful to in order to understand whether there's any difference in terms of their emotional and or their physical health. If we can give the cat choice to exit its carrier, and even to explore the consult room, that can help them to have that sense of control, which is so important for a non-obligate species like a cat. So having a specific cat friendly consultation room is also part of preparing for these sorts of Appointments.

If you've got a consult room where giving the cat freedom is contraindicated because of lots of nooks and crannies, lots of difficulty of being able to see the cat or the cat being able to get into physically inaccessible locations, that is going to mean that we are erring on the side of much more control where we're trying to. Dictate where the cat is, and that's going to put the cat, on the back foot. It's gonna make the cat feel more, vulnerable, and that's going to push it into more protective emotion.

The more vulnerable it feels, the more it's going to be, driven by or motivated by more fearful, anxious motivations in terms of emotions needing to protect itself. If we can lure them out, so if you open the cat carrier and they just walk out, they've usually got a more, engaging bias. So that means that they are already more optimistic in terms of their emotional response.

We can add to that by luring them, by using a food trail, you'll see on this photograph on the right hand side, where these little treats are just laid out, on the surface in front of the cat carrier. To lure the cat out into the room, so a little bit of hesitancy, not coming out immediately. Notice how the clinician has also positioned herself so she's not in front of the door of the cage, so she's actually behind it, so the cat is coming out into the room and towards the placed food offerings rather than seeing a person looming in front of the entrance to their cat carrier.

We can utilise communications such as slow blinking, which has been shown in some cats, not all cats respond to slow blinking, but in some cats can be a way of reducing their level of arousal, making them feel more confident about coming out into the consult room. But try to adopt the principle that we don't interact unless the patient initially approaches, whether that's been entirely voluntarily or whether it's been through the process of luring. We also want to ensure that the caregiver and all of the team adopt the same approach.

I'm sure you're very familiar with the situation where you are adopting a cat friendly approach and you put the cat carrier onto the surface, you open the door and stand back and allow the cat time and space to make a decision, and then the caregiver. Looms in front of the door and is in a rush to get the cat out so that you can get on with the job. But it is important that we either just have a quick chat with caregivers just before we open the door, and certainly make sure that everyone's on the same page so that we don't disrupt the cat friendly approach.

Also, when we're moving from the non-physical to the physical interaction, we still want to have the cat having a sense of control. So we want to come down to their level if we can, so we continue our assessment from a distance, but become more within the field of vision of the cat, and then extend out either a finger or a slightly outstretched hand. Allow the cat to use, and you can see in this photograph, the initial use of an avoidance response.

So this cat doesn't immediately engage with that, piece of the, of the, that hand offering that's coming from the clinician. Their first reaction is actually to move their head away and to use an avoidance response. But you'll see that the whiskers have moved slightly round so that they're actually getting some information from the air vibrations that are coming from the movement of the hand.

This may be a time when a slow blink may be useful. What's most important is that the movement is slow and smooth. We want to avoid jerking movements, fast movements, anything that could be perceived as a grabbing motion, which is going to increase that protective emotion from the cat, and make sure that the cat has some choice as to whether to approach.

So, again, we're back to that element of control. When we offer touch, it's important to do that in areas that are going to be familiar to the cat as being non-threatening. So, allowing the cat to initiate the one that's in control again, and allowing them to touch over their facial glands.

So, the hand is not moving, the cat is moving towards the hand. If the cat's calm, as we said, they may come out on their own, but where they go next, again, if they can have as much control over that as possible. So if you've got a very good er cat friendly consult room, then they can wand.

They can interact, again you can see in this picture on the left hand side, that outstretched hand, and the cat is pushing into the hand rather than hand being pushed into the cat. So here the cat again is leaning into the hand. When we are using food, we'll come on to that in more detail a little bit later as to how food works in these situations.

But we can use it to lure the cat into a required position. So things like putting, sort of a towel on something like. The, the scales, the scales have got that dip in them, which causes a sensation of safety for the cat, and therefore we can use food to encourage movement to a location that is suitable for us or is useful for us to get on with the job.

There will be some cats, however, where leaving the carrier is too difficult. And if they choose to stay in the carrier and it can be facilitated, particularly by deconstructable cat carriers, then that can be ideal for some patients. Either.

By sort of removing the the carrier top, just in the, on the right hand side here, the red. This is a sleepy pod cat carrier where you just unzip the top and remove the top. These ones where you deconstruct and remove the top.

But just think for a moment about both of these designs. If you do just remove the top completely without giving some form of protection, that can be quite a sudden exposure as far as the cat's concerned. So you can see, here's a cat who's been on this, I'm using the cursor, which I hope you can see, the, slide on the left hand side of the picture.

We've got the. In the carrier, who's got the towel over the top of the carrier, it's feeling very safe and secure. The towel is brought back and you start to open the door.

The cats can start to feel slightly more vulnerable. And then if we take the top off completely, then we may actually go quite rapidly into a situation of feeling unsafe. And so one of the things we can do is we can replace the lid with a towel, and we can do that before the.

Has been completely removed. So if you deconstruct it, you take the edges off here, the clips off here, and then you feed the towel in between the top and the bottom over the top of the cat, obviously, and then remove the lid, you're transitioning them from being in a completely enclosed plastic carrier to being, partially exposed, but still having that sensation of being able to hide. And we can do the same with the sleepy pod as well, just unzip partially and then place the towel in between the bottom and the top of the cat carrier and then remove the lid.

I've talked a lot about this concept of control and going back to the respecting not only the individual but also of the species, we need to remember that cats are solitary survivors. So this fundamental need to have a sense of control and a sense of choice is really important to them. It's part of who they are as a species.

Also, their social and their communication repertoires are adapted to solitary survival. So coming into a veterinary practise context is already challenging because we have taken them from their familiar environment, and we've put them into a situation where they are being forced to interact with unfamiliar individuals, which is contrary to their natural behaviour. Also, they have limits of social acceptance outside of their social groupings.

It's not normal for them to mix with individuals who are not socially familiar to them. They're also territorial and we've taken them away from home. They value familiarity, and they also are very suspicious of change, the more unchanging we can keep the atmosphere and the environment during a consultation, the better.

So obviously being very careful not to have phones in the consult room that might ring or buzz and cause auditory change, to make sure as well that if we do have windows on the doors. If we can actually have blinds on those, so we can pull those down so that movement outside of the room, so if you're in a consult room where people are walking past from other consult rooms to get to the reception area at the end of their appointment or are passing past on their way to their appointment, that can be very difficult for cats who are very suspicious of altering environments. So, if once we've got them into the consult room, we want that consult room to stay as static as possible.

And remember as well that the cat is a predator, and we tend to focus very much on its predator status, but it's also a prey species, and that means that all of its sensory equipment is designed to be vigilant. It's designed to watch out for potential trouble and potential predators, and therefore, it's going to be, again, on that more protective bias. Quite naturally when it's in our veterinary environment.

And they have very well developed sensory systems, which are challenged by the veterinary experience. And we'll come on to thinking about how we need to think in, in the of the whole experience of being at the veterinary practise, as well as the experience of traversing, transitioning, sorry, from home to the veterinary practise. So let's think about sensory input for a minute in terms of preparing for our feline patients.

Sensory input impacts on the way we interact with our feline patients, and we need to think about olfaction because this is a sense that is very poorly developed in ourselves. So we don't use olfaction, and therefore, we're usually quite oblivious to the fact that many of the scents in a human environment can be quite, Conspicuous, they can be quite intense. And therefore, just thinking about how we prepare for feline patients, avoiding things like strong perfumes or aftershaves when we're at work, if we're working with cats.

Avoiding scents which are aversive to the feline species, particularly things like citrus, for example. So just thinking about how we clean our consulting rooms, not from a hygiene point of view, but just purely from a cleaning point of view, making sure that we don't use. Citrus-based cleaners and avoiding the scent of other animals.

So having our cat only consult rooms, if we can, so we don't have remember that cats are prey as well as predators. So if we have a lot of alien, scents from other species around the cats, that is going to make them more protective in their bias. We can obviously help with olfactory signalling using things like the synthetic pheromones, both classic and friends were useful in terms of the fact that they increase the sensation of safety of the environment and of the individual, and now we have Felyway Optimum, which enables us to give both of those signals via the same.

Diffuser device. If we're wanting to use pheromones more specifically on surfaces, of course, and wanting to use a spray, we only have the classic available, which is the facial pheromone analogue, which is about security of place. But we concentrate perhaps a lot on, on olfaction, quite rightly so for feline patients, but auditory is also something to think about.

Think about how we use our voices. Humans are actually quite a noisy species. We tend to speak with quite, intense volume.

So when we're around feline patients, we want to lower our voices. We want to whisper. Kirsty Sexel, who's a veterinary behaviourist in Australia, uses the phrase whisper and glide when you're around your patients, and that's very important.

For our cat patients, but also about asking our caregivers as well, and talking about that team approach, everybody in the room needs to be engaged in this soft voice communication. So gentle sounds with a slow tempo are going to be very important. And then visual stimuli.

So we talked about the visual stimuli potentially from outside of the consult room, but also inside this gliding, again, using the terminology from Kirsty Saxel, slow, predictable movements, avoiding direct eye contact, and again thinking utilising the slow blink. And there's a couple of references here, where I've put references, most of these will be available in the guidelines. So if you download the guidelines, which you can do, they're open access documents, you can get them from the internet, then you can follow up these references if you wish to.

The slow blink has been associated with reduced body tension in feline patients. So when we use a slow blink to communicate with them, they've shown a reduction in their body tension, and also an increase in their likelihood to approach. So that suggests that we're increasing their engaging emotional bias.

So I talked about valence earlier, we can create more of an engaging bias, then that individual's more likely to approach. Allowing the cat to settle in their preferred location is very important. So if we can allow them to sit on top of a filing cabinet here or to sit on a perching stations if we've got cater specific consult rooms, also if we can give them hiding options, there are a few references here where it's been shown that if we can give hiding options to cats whilst they're in the consult room, that increases their coping ability.

We can minimise distress, and, as I say, for some individuals, having access to elevation can make them feel safe. And. Now, it doesn't mean that they're gonna stay on this platform for the whole of the consult, but what we may find is that if they can stand up here and observe the environment, if we go back to their natural behaviour, cats perch in order to observe the territory that they're in, and to look out for potential danger.

So if they can be on the perches, whilst we are talking to the caregiver, you know, taking any history that's relevant at the beginning of the consult, that ability just to observe the consult room, to perch and to view, can decrease their level of emotional arousal, and then we can lure them into a, a, a more accessible location in order to administer the, the injection, then that can be very beneficial from the feline perspective. And a lot of cats actually like to remain on their caregiver's lap. So, again, if we've got the right sort of furniture within those cat consult rooms where the caregiver can sit on a chair or on a bench, and therefore the cat can have access to the caregiver's lap, that may also, for some cats, make a big difference in how secure they feel during the consult.

And as well as the location that the cat is in, we also will need to think about the position that the cat is in. Some like to lie, others that we are more comfortable when they can stand. And the less restricted they are, the more they can move their body parts, the more, in control they feel.

And going back to that idea of choice and control. And so if we can make sure that if we do have to use something like towels in order to give them hiding opportunities, we don't want to be using those in a way that is a tight wrapping of the cap, because as soon as you tightly wrap, you limit the movement of their body parts, and they're more likely. To feel defensive.

So the idea of the towel is to provide a hiding option, but also to provide protection sometimes for us when we're interacting with the cat, but not to restrict them to the point where they feel that they don't have a sense of control. So here's some . It images of cats using towels, where the towel is used purely to hide, this is obviously for cystocentesis.

I don't have, pictures in this slide of of the microchipping experience, but. The same applies that you're only going to be putting the needle into one part of the anatomy, the rest of it can be covered using towelling, and therefore the cat can feel safe. And so towelling used in this loose draping.

Manner is actually the appropriate way to use towels rather than, you know, sort of wrapping the cat up and getting them to feel restricted. And this is Ilona using the towel, as I've already described as a lid for the cat carrier. So, 85% of caregivers actually say that their cats' welfare is impaired by putting them onto a consulting table.

So the more imaginative we can be with the locations and the positions that cats can be in whilst we're in the consult, the. Better. And allowing them to choose that, location is going to be very beneficial.

So, inside the carrier, we've got illustrated here on the veterinary professionals lap or on the caregiver's lap, all of these can make it much easier for the cat to feel in control. Also, we want to think about control in terms of initiation of interaction. And there's quite a lot of evidence again, there's some references here for you that longer interactions take place if the cat chooses to approach.

So if we can actually engage. The cap so that they start the interaction at the beginning of the consult. We've got a longer period of time available to us to get our job done.

They're going to stay in our company, stay in proximity to us for longer if they were the one that initiated. Also, limiting physical interaction at the start of the consultation decreases the perception that we are trying to take over and therefore, that we may be threatening. So, we want to move away from this idea that we pick cats up and restrain them.

And so we don't talk about restraint guidelines, and we don't now even talk about handling guidelines, we're talking about interaction guidelines. Taking care to offer the potential to make contact in a non-threatening manner is really the basis of how we're going to prepare for this consult. So where do we want to touch them?

We want to look at where they prefer to be touched, and these facial glands we've talked about in relation to Feway classic. So we talked about classic being the basic, based on an analogue of these facial. Pheromones, the facial pheromone complex.

And so where these facial glands are positioned is where cats who are socially bonded to one another will groom one another to exchange information. So it's a part of the face where they Accept interaction from other cats, providing they're in the same social group, and it's through the provision of this F3 faction that they also sent their environment and giving signals that the environment is safe. So if we can allow them to mark onto pieces of furniture in the, in the console.

Room as well during that exploration period at the beginning of the consult, that can help them to feel safer. And we can massage for a few seconds in that area, just to see if the cat is enjoying or or benefiting from that interaction. So if you just massage for a few seconds around the facial areas marked on this, diagram.

Courtesy of Sarah Ellis from my Cat Care, if you put your fingers in those areas and just massage slightly and then pause and see how the cat responds, and often the cat will then push their face into the hand to continue that interaction. Other interaction considerations as well as whispering and gliding is to offer choice in terms of hiding options, monitor their body language, so we're looking, remember with cats that we're looking at their body posture, but we're also monitoring their facial expression because. The body language of the cat takes a long time to catch up with the emotional change.

So, if a cat, it goes from being in a slightly wary, position to a very, worried position, so intensifies its protective emotion, the body, the posture of the whole body will take a little while to catch up with that, whereas the facial expression can be changed very quickly. Cats are also like all 4 ft on the floor. And we said earlier that it's a good idea to keep them in the same unchanging environment.

So, to stay in the consultation room, it's ideal not to remove the cat into another room to carry out a procedure. If you do need to take them from an area, from a consult room into another area for any reason, make sure that you put them into a carrier that's covered, and. Make sure that if you're using a, a, a towel wrap in the new location, that again, you take all the same principles, and if you're going to be engaging with different personnel, remember, trust is not transferable.

So each person who starts to interact, so say you decide you want to have another member of Stuff helping you, with, this particular cat. Even if they come into the consult room or you take the cat to another location, each person needs to follow that non-physical interaction build up, in order to build up trust. It isn't going to be just cause they've gone through that with one person, they're going to transfer that to another.

But ideally, and for the microchipping, microchipping appointment, ideally, we're going to be staying within the same consultant, so it shouldn't be as challenging. For those consultations. Then we come to the individual rather than just because it's a cat, why because it is this cat?

And that is where we start to look at these actual behavioural responses and asking the question, why is the cat responding the way it is? And that's about looking at their motivating emotion and their level of emotional arousal, trying to identify what their underlying cause is for their behaviour, and avoiding the use of negative labelling. Negative labelling of words like devil cats, aggressive cats, evil individual, those things lead to a change in our behavioural response towards the cat, and this has been shown, in some studies looking at interactions with cats in shelters where if we are using these.

Sorts of labels, then we are already tense in our interaction, and that then increases the protective bias of the cats. They feel that tension from our interaction, which makes them feel more vulnerable, and therefore, we're likely to escalate that sensation of protection. So why has this individual got a reduced capacity to cope is our overriding question.

And if we can get that information before the appointment, so we actually know this individual, that is going to be helpful. So, what sorts of things actually affect an individual's ability to cope? A very wide ranging.

So we've got genetics and parental health, we've got the what happened to them as a kitten. And previous veterinary visits. So sometimes we won't have all of that information available to us.

Lots of cats come into homes as rescues or transitioning from one home to another for various reasons. We may have more information about their previous veterinary visits. But when we are thinking about developing a plan for, interacting with feline patients, it's useful to have as much information as possible about their past experiences.

Their current physical health status we've already mentioned. Their current state of sensory arousal is gonna be something we could have managed a little bit with the olfactory auditory visual stimuli we already discussed and also by talking to our caregivers as well about what they're doing at home. Considering cognition, cognition influences the impact of any experience, and learning happens whether we're having a good experience or whether we're having a bad experience.

And relating to the veterinary consult, it's important to remember that caregiver stress also influences feline distress. So, if people are apprehensive about the, the consult that's about to take place, particularly if they're worried about needles, for example, Some humans find it difficult to see injections, being carried out. Then think about keeping the cat in the consult room.

So we talked about not changing their environment and asking the caregiver to just step out of the room while we carry out, the procedure of implanting the, the microchip, rather than having the caregiver stay in the room. So thinking about the caregiver's influence as well on what the cat is going to perceive through its cognition. And also how that's going to influence its emotional state.

First visits coming into the practise are crucially important so for when we're getting into these younger kittens, we want to think about when they're coming into the the veterinary practise, ideally not to do too many potentially aversive things on the first interaction. So we may want to, sort of. Space out those experiences, if we've got the vaccination appointments as well.

We've got that 20 week window for microchipping, so we may not want to do that at the first vaccination. If that's the first time the cats come, and we want to get a vaccine, then we might want to sort of think about, say, monitoring and, and, widening that experience and making sure that we are not doing too many stressful, interventions in one visit. So, underlying emotional motivation and the ability to cope is what we're going to concentrate on.

And what factors influence emotional motivation and arousal. When we think about how the cat's behaving, when they're protective in their emotional state, and we've seen why there are many reasons why they might be protective in the consult room. We've got to remember that they can respond to those protective emotions in different ways.

And when they select a behavioural response, the aim of it is to make them feel safe. So if we can, then we want to ensure that their selected response is successful. And if that's not possible, so if how they are trying to protect themselves is not conducive to us getting the job done, so they're hiding in a place that is inaccessible.

Then we want to either make that behavioural response, so still avoidance, but make it successful. Or if they're using something like repulsions, so they're trying to use a behavioural response to get us to go away, that obviously can't be successful, then we want to offer an alternative response. And that's where the hiding opportunities can be so useful.

So just taking the first few seconds of the consultation can really determine how successful it's going to be. If we can just watch and listen, just for a few seconds, we're gonna get important information about the patient. We're going to be able to do both a physical and an emotional assessment.

And that clinical examination is already beginning, so emotional assessment is part of that clinical examination. What is the emotional bias? Is the cat engaging, trying to come out and interact as soon as we give them the.

Opportunity to do so, or are they staying towards the back of the of the cat carrier and showing a tendency to be protective? And what sort of level of emotional arousal is the cat in at this beginning of the consult? When we listen, remember, we're listening with our eyes, and we're observing, but we also need to make sure that that listening leads to actions.

It's no good seeing a situation where a cat is telling us through stay at the back of the, cat carrier that they're in a protective emotional bias, and then grabbing the cat by. The fore pause and trying to urge it to come out, trying to force it against its will to come out, that is going to make it feel more protective. So, that's what we're doing with watching, observing, but then we're modifying what we're doing according to what we see.

So I've talked about engaging and protective emotions. This is based on Jack Pangsepp's work. In the Heath model, I use this different terminology from Jack Pangse, but it's the same systems and very much reliant on, on his model, to in behavioural medicine, looking at emotions being those that either protect or engage the individual.

And I represent them in the heath model with the taps of the sink, with the engaging emotions represented by the cold tap and the negative or protective emotions represented by the red tap. And I've highlighted here in red, the ones that we're mainly concerned with in the veterinary consultation. So, engaging emotion of desire seeking, we're not going to be seeing social play, lust or care really coming into play in the consult experience.

And then fear, anxiety, pain and frustration on the protective side and the main emotions that we're going to be encountering. But we can have a situation where we get emotional conflict represented here by the mixer tap, which means that the experience is, is giving a little bit of both types of emotion. And this is more common in canine patients, but there are some cats who are very sociable, that have been very well socialised and in Enjoy human interaction.

So they are desire seeking, but because they've either had negative experiences before in the veterinary practise, or because of auditory or olfactory cues that they experience as they come out of the cat carrier, they then have a fear of anxiety response. So they're now in a situation of conflict. And one of the issues that arises from that is that you then have a higher level of emotional arousal because more emotion is pouring into the sink.

You've turned on more than one tap at a time. So arousal is thought of as the balance if you like, the result of the amount of the emotion that's coming in, so whether it's engaging or protective, but also the inflow, that's gonna be elevated in situations of conflict, but also it can be elevated by these other stimuli, these other auditory stimuli, increasing perception of challenge. And that is going to be related, the arousal is related to how that is in proportion to the capacity or the size of the sink and the drainage.

So the emotion comes in and the emotion goes out, and the relationship between those in relation to the size of the sink determines the level of the emotion in the sink. And when we've got a cat that's got a lot of emotional arousal, so high levels in the sink, they're more prone to flooding. And it's the flooding of emotion that then leads to the behaviours that we find difficult or challenging in the consult room.

So I've just represented here this difference between valence and arousal, motivation then leads to behavioural responses which indicate whether the individual wants to protect themselves or to engage. So if it's the engaging emotions, then the cat's going to come forward, going to interact, and if it's a protective emotion, then they're going to give behaviours which help them to feel safe. But arousal also leads to behavioural responses.

You get either, so-called displacement behaviours, so things like lip licking or scratching. So the cat starts flicking its tongue and lip licking, or drainage behaviours. So grooming cats suddenly starting to groom themselves, which can be a.

Drainage behaviour, which are not related to which type of emotion, just due to there being a high level of emotion in the sink. Displacement's going to happen only if the level is very high, whereas drainage can happen when there's lower levels. You can sort of pull the plug out of the sink, whatever the level of water there is present.

So when we're looking at our cat friendly interaction, our aim is to increase the positive or the engaging emotional bias and decrease the negative or protective emotion. But it's not about removing the protective emotions, as we'll see in a moment. It's about enabling behavioural responses to be successful and lowering emotional arousal.

So we talked about the fact we need appropriate interactions and we also need a modified veterinary environment. So that was the consult room being cat only about the auditory and the visual stimuli, for example. I want to talk a little bit about food, because food is often thought about as being a way of changing emotions and being making it more pleasurable for our patients to be in the consult room, and that's certainly true.

But there are different ways that food can be used. So we can use food to reinforce specific desirable behaviours, so we can use those small pieces in trails, which we showed with the cat coming out of the carrier or the cap going onto the scales in earlier pictures. We can also use food to cue engaging emotion in a particular place.

So, rather than to move the cat to go from one place to another, just to make them feel more engaged with the environment, so we can put a licky mat on the consult table, for example. And in the context of the microchipping experience, the microchipping appointment, we're going to alter emotional predominance. So this is about.

Sustaining a more engaging emotional bias within the handling procedure, so while we're having to actually handle a minister in this case, the microchip, so we need a duration. Of that engaging emotion. And this is going to involve larger volumes of food, or more lickable treats or wet food, something that can last longer, rather than those little pieces of food that you saw in the earlier pictures.

So we want highly palatable items, and it can be very useful if it can be something that the client brings with them because we want it to be something that's specific to this individual. And when we're the engaging emotion is being increased by the presence of the food, it's important to remember that doesn't remove the protective emotions. So a cat will still potentially have some fear anxiety associated with being in the consult room, but we can use the food to temporarily enhance the engaging emotion and change the relative.

Predominance. The importance of that is, it's always the predominant emotion that leads to the behavioural output for the individual. So if we can get a more engaging bias, so predominantly engaging emotion, then we'll see interaction and engagement behaviours.

So think of this as a, a balancing scale, and this cat here has got a, a higher bias towards protective emotion, illustrated by the hissing, spitting type reaction as we open up the carrier. Obviously, hopefully, you're already thinking when you look at this picture, why haven't they put a towel between the bottom and the top before they took the lid off. So, that would be a way of potentially reducing that protective bias.

But this cat is showing already what we would call repulsion behaviour, get go away behaviours. And so we've got a higher predominance of protective emotion. If we then use something like the licky mat to switch on the cold tap to increase the engaging emotion of desire seeking, then we flip that predominance, and now we have the potential that we can engage with this cat and get the procedure done.

The protective emotion may be entirely justified by being in this veterinary context. And the aim is not to remove that emotion if it's justified, so we don't want to get rid of fear or. Together, we want to make sure that we get rid of any unjustified protective emotions.

So that means not using handling techniques that would make them feel more worried, like the tight wrap of the towel, for example, that we discussed earlier. So, what we're aiming for with this licking mat is to just change the balance, momentarily. And one of the ways that we think about this is triggering, engaging emotion doesn't necessarily remove protective ones because the protective ones could be beneficial to the individual, but it gives us that window of balance where we can.

Get the job done. So we're not trying to just remove protective emotions. We're trying to make sure that we understand they are in a protective state.

We facilitate the behavioural response to those emotions, and at the same time, try to temporarily change the bias. So how do we identify which behavioural responses are associated with protective emotion and how do we make them successful? And I'm gonna look at this in terms of reducing risk.

One of the things we don't want to do is find that these cats tip over into a more challenging behavioural response, and potentially one that is more, dangerous in terms of inflicting injury on either veterinary personnel or on caregivers. So I illustrate the idea of responses to protective emotion using this tree analogy. The idea being that when you are feeling unsafe, you could climb a tree and find a safe place to hang out until the threat has gone away, or you have recovered from your perception of that threat.

And this protective emotional tree has two sets of branches, it has 4 branches altogether. Two of them aim to increase distance and decrease interaction with the trigger through either repulsion, so make it go away or avoidance, you go away from it. And two of them have the aim of increasing availability of information either by becoming inhibited, so just taking information in or through appeasement, which is exchanging information with the person or other animal that you're worried about.

Now cats will show appeasement, as illustrated here by exchanging information with humans. But that is less likely to be seen in a consult room because we are not familiar people. But we saw that through appropriate interaction, we can decrease our, the perception they have of us as a threat and encourage them to exchange information with us through the offering of the hand.

As we see on this tree, there are side branches, and the side branches represent different intensities of each of these behavioural responses. And the aim is to find, as I said, this safe location represented here by this cross. So somewhere lodged between that side branch and the main branch, this cat finds a place where it feels safe and secure.

And if that happens, if you feel safe, there's no need to change your position. You don't need to try and go to another branch if that's a place that you feel safe. So, increasing intensity is represented, as I say, by the the cyber.

Ranches along the main branch and you can label those grumble up to bite, look away, up to run away, watching, up to staring. I haven't filled in the appeasement one with examples, as I say, that's less likely to be seen during the consultation experience. So, let's have a look at a cat in a consult room with fear, anxiety, motivation, who's trying to have an avoidance response.

If we can see that through our initial observation remaining in the carrier, and we can respond to that appropriately, so we say, OK, this cat is fearful and anxious quite naturally. It's using an avoidance response. How can I make that response successful and show the cat that staying where it is in the in the carrier can achieve that little point of safety on the tree?

So we can allow them to stay in the carrier and we can cover the cat with the towel, and therefore the cat develops that sensation of safety and success. So using the tree analogy at the vet, the cat has selected the avoidance branch. It stayed in its carrier and felt safe, and therefore it's been successful.

It's decreased its interaction with the trigger, which is the veterinary environment and the personnel. But the vet practise is still triggering fear anxiety. The cat is still on the tree, it hasn't yet totally recovered.

But there's no need to escalate, so the cat doesn't physically need to try and move away, it doesn't need to intensify its avoidance, and it doesn't need to change branch, so it doesn't need to hop over onto a repulsion branch and start to hiss or swipe. So what happens if we don't recognise the purpose of a behavioural response? If we fail to see what the cat is trying to achieve, then we can't make it successful.

And sometimes cats stay in carriers, and we find that difficult. And I'm gonna take the sound off here, actually, because it's quite, distressing, and you've all heard it before, how cats, squeal and, and I'll give you a little bit of it. OK.

They. And hopefully those of you who are watching this webinar are thinking goodness gracious, we wouldn't be doing that, but we do know that there are other ways in which we override the cat's desire to feel safe using one or other of these interactions. And basically what's happening in this video is that they are cutting off the safety option of staying in the carrier, and they're saying that is not available.

And therefore, the avoidance response is not being successful, then they are going. Select a different response. Maybe that the cat hops onto the inhibition branch and starts to stare at the individuals and maybe even escalates up into, in a freezing posture on the consult table.

But if they go onto the repulsion branch, they may start to hiss or to swipe. And if that is not successful, then they will escalate up into biting. And the other thing that happens is that frustration starts to be triggered.

Frustration is the emotion that happens when a failure to succeed is experienced. So as soon as we block one of the behavioural responses, make it unsuccessful, then frustration will be triggered. And so we want to Avoid escalation, both through a lack of opportunity to succeed, and also we want to reduce the, the onset of frustration, which is going to intensify and accelerate the response.

And if we've got a bite response with frustration, we're more likely to be injured. We've got to remember that all of those behavioural responses are of equal significance, whether they choose to hide or to inhibit or to repel, any response can be associated with any degree of protective emotion or level of arousal. It's not that when they're hissing and spitting, they're more stressed.

The cat that is avoiding can be experiencing just as much protective emotion as the one that's hissing and spitting. And they can also use a combination of responses. So these individuals are both avoiding and inhibiting.

You can see them gathering information, both visually. If this was a video, you'd be seeing their whiskers moving, their nose moving to get olfactory and vibration information, so they're inhibited, but they're also using avoidance. And within each response there's a possibility of escalation of intensity.

They'll continue that escalation until they reach a point of safety or perceived safety. And that's not just physical safety, that's also emotional safety as well. And so, if the response is unavailable or perceived to be unsuccessful, and they go to another alternative, they go to that alternative at the same intensity.

So this cat has tried to use avoidance, and it has not been successful. If they try to get this cat out from this location, what we're going to then see is a repulsion response, which is going to be of the same intensity. It's going to be equal intensity.

So the next response is potentially going to be more dangerous. So if we can increase perception of success, we'll reduce that risk. And then if you think about arousal, when we're thinking about reducing arousal, we need to reduce input.

And reducing input is incredibly important in the veterinary consultation room. Increasing drainage isn't really going to be something for these microchip appointments. This is more relevant to hospitalisation or to a prolonged examination or a prolonged investigation.

Lowering input though is highly relevant, and it's both through appropriate interactions, minimising protective emotion and reducing the salience of the triggers, and it's also through modifying that whole veterinary environment, thinking about it from start to finish. So what are the implications of cat interactions? Gentle handling can lower the risk of protective emotion, and it can reduce arousal.

There's been again some research, and we've given you some references here that have shown that this kind of gentle handling is superior to tight restraint in terms of giving less struggling, so they are, these cats who are handled using a cat friendly approach or a cat. Friendly, understanding of why the animals behaving the way they are, they're less likely to struggle. There's a shorter period needed to examine.

They're less likely to escape once you actually stop handling them, so they're less likely to try and jump off the table, and fewer postures and behaviours which indicate distress. It also influences their reaction to the environment, and this is important for future consults. So cats are, when they're more passively handled, choose to spend more time in that location after the handling has stopped, and they, when they are in, held in a more restrictive manner with less choice, then they show more aversion.

To that environment. And so it's not just about this appointment, it's also about future appointments. And the study, one of the studies that I quoted there also looked at passive handling in relation to clypnosis and scruffing, two ways of handling which are not compatible with a cat friendly approach.

But it showed that there were less negative signs with that gentle approach to handling. And the blinded observers showed, that all of these were, Advantageously affected by gentle handling as compared to scruffing or the use of clypnosis. So it can be really helpful to actually think about developing a plan, a plan for the individual cats, a plan for the fact that we're gonna have more cats coming through the consultation system as a result of, as a result of the microchip legislation.

If we can have pre-appointment questionnaires to find out more about the patient before they come to the practise, that can really help. Things like their early history, where they were required, etc. But, but also about specific responses.

If we can find out more about this individual as to why it's. What it might be fearful of, that can help us with our, sensory challenges in the veterinary practise. And also, how have they responded to veterinary practises in, visits in the past.

We may have that information already, or if it's a new cat, coming to the practise, then we may want to find that out from the caregiver. And then if there are factors such as age, which increase the potential for things like OAD, JD, that's another, another piece of information that helps us to be able to provide a really tailor-made consultation for that individual. And if we want more information about that, then using things like video clips and, etc.

Can really help in understanding how likely that is to affect, that consultation. And then advise the caregiver. So I said at the beginning it was a team approach.

I just want to think finally about what we can do with the caregiver. If we could advise the caregiver on ways that they can prepare for the veterinary visit through things like carrier training and consent-based care for handling, so for this particular type of procedure, it would be things like touching around the, around the skin, tenting of the skin in preparation. For injection, those sorts of handling techniques, if we can get caregivers to work on these things at home, then we can really increase that engaging bias when the cat comes into the veterinary practise, and we can decrease the protective emotions of fear and anxiety.

We can also help by asking the caregiver to bring that favoured treat, so that we can use it for altering the emotional bias, and we can also use things like favoured bedding, and we can bring a towel for the consult table. We can provide, . Axiolytics as well, where appropriate.

And so, I'm, I'm going to finish with that. I'm just conscious of time, so I'm not gonna go into the crack carrier training and the handling training. I'm going to just, finish by thinking about those cats that are.

Particularly challenged with the veterinary visit and whether we might want to use things like, pre-visit, anxiolytics, where they are appropriate. So I'm gonna just speed through a couple of these, slides here. I can, make sure that we can get, We can get the PDF of this available for you if you want that extra information.

So pre-vet visit medication, finally, gabapentin is the most effective for the axiolytic effect in cats, but it doesn't replace the need for cat friendly environment and interactions. So we're not thinking about medication instead of a cat friendly approach, we're thinking of it in addition. The benefits are quite well documented in the papers, so there's again some references here.

It reduces distress during transport and examination. It induces the intensity of behavioural responses, so it enables cats to reach that sensation of safety at a lower intensity and thereby reduces the risk of injury. And it's shown to be associated with improved healthcare in terms of being able to get more thorough examination in other contexts, and certainly can be something that should be considered in situations of microchipping.

We need to give it at home prior to the patient being in a situation of arousal. That is the ideal way to use gabapentin, a single dose, and that dose is going to peak its effect about 2 to 3 hours after administration. So, we want the caregiver to give this ideally 2 to 3 hours before they're coming for the consult.

And urging, verging towards the 3 hours, I think, can be beneficial. The dose is 20 mg per kilogramme or they say 100 to 200 milligramme per cat in some of the literature, for some of the smaller cats who may be able to use 50 milligramme, but around 20 milligramme per kilogramme, is the ideal dose. It's safe at that dose with physical health conditions, with the of CKD at RS stages 2 and 3.

So there is this paper, on serum concentrations of gabapentin with chronic kidney disease, showing that at stages 2 and 3, we may need to be careful. So, obviously, thinking about our individual patients. It's also safe to be given prior to.

Anaesthesia in other situations. Obviously, we wouldn't be thinking for a, for a microchip appointment generally to be using, to be giving, with a view to anaesthesia, but we said earlier that some of these cats may be coming in for sedation or anaesthesia for other reasons, and then we may do the microchip at that time. Side effects, definitely sedation and ataxia, so we want to keep the cat indoors after the consult and avoid any risk of them falling for up to 8 hours, because it does have an 8 hour duration.

And these are some protocols that we have worked on with Matt Gurney, from Zero Pain Philosophy for emotionally challenged cats during veterinary visits and procedures. This is not just about, the microchip appointment, but certainly for those cats that are particularly challenged, you may find it helpful to give pre-visit. Dedication to reduce.

So what you're basically doing is you're reducing that protective bias, making it more, possible to get them into, an engaging predominance, and therefore likely to see more engaging interaction, but also that decrease in the intensity of the behavioural responses to protective emotion, by using these sorts of protocols. So I hope that's been helpful. I think we're probably at about a time as well.

I know that you wanted to, see if we could take some questions as well, before the end. So I'll leave those up, at the moment, and we'll go on to thinking about any questions that you might have. Thank you, Sarah, for presenting tonight's webinar.

We just have one question this evening. So it was just, do we actually, it was more so in relation to the actual microchip. So do we know why actual readers beep for themselves, you know, I don't know if that's something that you can answer.

So you say, why do all readers beep? That saying that that's not a good thing for cats. Yeah, I'm, I'm thinking it's.

Yeah, I, I don't know why they all beep, and I certainly think it would be very helpful if there was, an option to have either, you know, a visual, reading of a visual reader rather than an auditory reader for. Patients, and I think probably when they were first, brought onto the market, and it, it cat microchipping wasn't being thought of, then probably that's why, there wasn't any thought about the sensory input. But I agree with, I think it was Hilda that asked that question.

I agree with you that, we're not, we need to consider as we're moving into this era of, cats being obligatory. Microchipped, then we do need to think about, changing equipment or making the equipment more, user friendly, in terms of, of taking readings, because obviously we need to take a reading to check that it's in position and then also thinking about the use of microchips for reuniting, cats and caregivers, it, it could potentially be quite stressful for cats to be, having a beep, every time they have a microchip reader put over them. And also the size of the microchip readers as well, I think, might be something else that we need to.

Think about like now that we're going to have feline patients being microchipped routinely. Yes, so I guess, technology and, new things will come about, so I'm sure that will probably change in the future. But thank you again, Sarah, for an informative, session, and thank you again, Identi, for sponsoring tonight's webinar.

We hope that everyone enjoyed, tonight, and you are feeling a lot more confident in practise, in microchipping cats in the future. Thank you all for joining us, and we hope you all enjoy it, join us again soon. Good night.

Thank you very much.