Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of Vet Chat, and today is a fascinating topic that we talk about, and it's something that is possibly not really given an awful lot of attention in many spheres. And I'm delighted to be joined by Daniel Cummings, who heads up the behaviour team at Cats Protection. And of course this episode is brought to you in association with the feline behaviour Conference, which we, we have hosted on the site.

And I dare say for, for many of us, whether you're, you're a vet, whether you're a nurse, whether you're a cat owner, we will provide a a hell of a lot of insight. I know certainly from my experiences with cats I've never been able to understand them, so hopefully Daniel, you'll be able to shed some light for me. Now, you know, obviously you've got a wealth of experience in, in animal behaviour with your, you know, your past history with various different rescue organisations, but cat behaviour is something that is, Potentially, you know, I dare say neglected by people and, you know, you associate abnormal dog behaviours, you know, the barking, the running off in the park, the not wanting to go back on the lead, the chewing things that they shouldn't, and I am of course specifically relating to my own spackle at this moment in time, we have a fractious relationship.

But tell me a bit about, you know, cat bait behaviour, you know, what, what for a starter, you know, why does it interest you and, and, and why do you think it is something that people maybe gloss over? Well, well, first, thanks for having us on. But firstly, the, the thing that that really interested me about cat behaviour and why I moved away from doing more dog behaviour and pun fully intended is that cats are very much almost the underdog and sort of the amount of maybe research that's gone into them, their understanding, if you walk into a a pet store, you'll see a full array of dog products, but you'll see very little in the way of, of cat products.

So it's almost a Not neglected, but a proper understanding of what cats are, how they function and how to give them good welfare, I think was always neglected and, and I think it's one of the reasons that intrigued me because how can we make more people help cats, whether it's as vets, vet nurses, or as owners, hard to have better welfare because I think they have overtaken them they're the most populous pet in the UK so there's more cats in, in UK households than there are dogs, which some people think may find a bit surprising. And I think it, it's fascinating. I mean, you know, I, I hold my hands up and, and you know, the cats protection community can very much, you know, sort of, seek me out on this, but I'm through and through a dog person.

In fact, I'm a vet who is allergic to cats, so it's always quite entertaining when I'm in the consult room and there's a long-haired domestic cat, that the owner will insist is a Maine Coon. And, and I, I, I spend most of the consult sneezing all the way through, but, you know, cats for years have been lauded as having, you know, the human slave versus the owner of a dog who is, you know, an owner or a or a parent, and so on and so forth in in modern terminologies, but is that, is that just us? Blanket describing cats because of the behaviours that we, we naturally attribute to them, or, or is that, is there something to be said for that?

Are cats just better at training owners than dogs? I, I think it's really interesting, so I think all animals are are pets, they're really sort of victims of of anthropomorphism and and give them really human qualities, but I think cats more so than dogs, and I always sort of say, most people. Don't say they don't like dogs unless they've had a previous bad experience.

People say, oh, I don't like it because the dogs barked at me, but you'll get people that will sort of just really passionately hit cats without any sort of reason. Of course, allergies and, and things like that aside, there's some people that just they'll say, oh, cats are really spiteful and vindictive and, and not to go, too far in a tangent, but cats, sorry history I had this really up and down thing where they were. Literally back in ancient Egypt worshipped as gods, then they were persecuted a lot, particularly sort of the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, and now we're sort of coming around to the other side of that.

I think because cats are less dependent on humans, I think sometimes we can feel insecure and, we don't feel as, as valued, so almost people want to appease the, the cat bear, but it's just because cats are recently . Less sort of recently evolved from their closest ancestor than dogs. So dogs for, for tens of thousands of years and more have evolved from their most recent ancestor, whereas cats still share a lot of their behaviours with their most recent ancestor, which is the African wildcat, which still exists in African actually, if you, if you look at your domestic cat, you look at the African wildcat, they share so much of the same behaviour traits and things like that.

So it's safe to say that, you know, we're still nowhere near understanding cats to the same extent that we are dogs, at least as a sort of general population. And you've probably got a distinct advantage over many of us. But, but what is it, obviously, you know, you, you, you deal with all kinds of cats, certainly as vets we do and and there's that.

Inherent sort of, you know, you can hear the box hissing in the waiting room outside, but of course, you know, these are animals who have taken out of a nice warm, cosy, comfortable environment into, you know, a, a, an alien environment where they're stuck inside a box, there's loads of smells of dogs and they can't get away from anything. So as vets we're instantly seeing cats who are heightened to to their environment, so. In terms of, you know, I look at it as a vet, saying, you know, what can we do better to, to engage cat owners and, and to help them and indeed ourselves to understand better about their behaviours.

Well, well, I think that's really important is that it's the understanding rather than the do people always want practical tools, but a lot of the time it's just understanding what makes cats different from dogs. So for example, cats are not inherently sort of social animals and and people have a big issue with that with cats and and cons specific so the cats compared to dogs and And other dogs. But the other big thing is how territorial they are and how dependent they are in that context.

So when you remove a cat from a house, that's very different from taking the dog out of the house of dogs is very accustoms and cos better with being moved, whereas cats are these territorial animals, as soon as they are removed from their environment. That is what is sort of holds them together and gives them their structure. So then, like you say, they're put in the carrier and moved to this completely alien environment.

Weirdly, we think obviously there is that element with cats and, and as they've evolved, they have been both predator and prey. So whilst they've been out sort of chasing hunting things, they're solitary independent . Hunters, so they need to keep themselves well protected.

So that's why more often than not, the default is to run away and keep themselves safe. So what we need to communicate with owners is just how much more stressful. It's not just because vets are poking and prodding and doing terrible things to cats.

It's just the very nature of being removed from their environment. But there's lots of stuff we can do and and as vets and That nurses is sort of encouraging owners first of all, just to take cat behaviour seriously, but to sort of teach them valuable skills. So most people yourself probably included, when you get a dog, you'll try and do some kind of lead training or harness training and get them used to that.

People don't do the same with the cat, they don't think of what is essential training, but what's essential training for a cat? Teaching them to like the cat carrier. So most of the cats, by the time they end up in your That table, they've been manhandled.

They've been forced in the cat carrier, they've been put in the car. So they're already stressed as much as anything before they get to you. Whereas actually, if we can remove one of those elements of stress, and we can train them to to get the cat car and be comfortable in the cat carrier, that actually makes a lot easier and not to make a very cumbersome egway.

That was one of the sessions that was covered in the behaviour conference that Sarah Ellis did for us. It's sort of training the cat to voluntarily without coercion or forced to go into the cat carrier and then you have a cat that is instantly starting the day, the vet visit less stressed and and we always say is going to the vet one stressful experience, or is it a number of different stressful experiences. And if we can start to take away a few of those stressful experiences overall, the cat is a bit calmer and it makes it a lot easier.

Yeah, absolutely, and I think, you know, that is something, you know, as you say, it's often not, you know, one thing that fixes everything, but it's so many little changes. I wanna come back to something you touched on a bit earlier, and, and it is something that fascinates me because you've got, you know, like you say, you walk into a pet store and there's swathes of dogs. Environmental enrichment materials and so on and so forth, and we automatically associate, you know, if your, if your dog's got this issue, that issue, if your dog wants to kill the postman every time he puts it through the door, er, you know, this, this, this, this and this, but as you say, the cat behaviours and cat, you know, I dare say in a lot of cases, anxieties are very differently manifested, you know, where I speak to people and like, you know, when, when the postman comes, the cat disappears upstairs and is hid under the bed.

And you know, there's all of these different things that we, we associate with helping dogs, but in, in terms of, you know, environmental enrichment for cats, how key and important is that to, to make, you know, a, a well adjusted pet cat. You know, what, what, what things can people and should people be saying rather than actually, you know, this is something nice to have, you know, what, what are the almost the essential elements to, to help with that. I think, a really great way to look at it is what can we do in the environment.

The, the two big things, and this is something to look at in. Vett pens and catteries and rescues is hiding spaces and levels or off the ground access. So there have been studies on this.

I think it's either 2007 or 2009, Riel Casey looked at hiding enrichment, and they found that cats that had something physically to hide in, so like a box or cat's protection cell, the, the hide and sleep, something that they physically hide in, they will be less stressed and display less hides seeking behaviours. So I know, obviously, sometimes with vet pens what you get is the, the blanket put over the, Pandora, which is better than nothing, but if the cat doesn't physically have something to go inside, that will affect the cat and make them more stressed. Similarly, in the home environment, having lots of hiding opportunities.

But the other big thing is cats love to get off the ground whenever they're stressed or uncomfortable, and you probably, if anyone's listening with cats, they might spook themselves or jump up in the windowsill or run up the stairs. If you then take that to scenarios where You've maybe got two cats living in a home and they don't really like each other. What often happens is they're forced to pass each other a lot at ground level, whereas say, for example, you have a hallway and you upturn a box to create this temporary platform.

If one cat can hop up in the box, they feel more comfortable, the other cat walks is passed, you sort of lose that sense of, of conflict. And the other big things that the two big things, that we like to encourage people is, enrichment feeding. And, toy play.

So enrichment feeding, for almost any behaviour problem we encourage that. So that's little puzzle feeders, you can buy puzzle balls, you can use snuffle match, you can use it with wet food. And that is sort of the cat figuring out how do I get food from this source.

And that by far and away is helpful. And again, there's another interesting paper on it, I think ISFM put out about food puzzles and, and well-being. And then the other side.

Is toy play. So a lot of people will say, oh, my cat doesn't really play or there are toys there. And cats are really in the desire to play, but sometimes we don't provide outlet, as we say, get a really good fish rod toy, and these are often ones you don't see in in pet shops.

So you want a long handle and a really long like fishing line and there's a clump of feathers at the end, and then you're going to tease it about like it is a prey so your cat can pounce and jump on it, then you may have somebody comes into your, You're practising is say, oh my cat really likes to grab around my wrist or grab around my ankle and, and have little nibbles with its teeth. And again, that's a different kind of prey play behaviour, in which case getting a kickaroo toy or advising them to get a kickaroo style toy, which just gives them an outlet for these behaviours because what people don't appreciate is that these are inbuilt into cats. So if you don't have an appropriate outlet for it, that outlet might end up being yourself if they've not been socialised well or brought up well.

Yeah, and I do you know what, it's fascinating, isn't it, because I think, you know, flippantly in the conversations that we have, invariably it's with pet owners, who, their cats are maybe a little bit on the, the wrong side of obese, and, and you sit there kind of thinking, you know, do you play with them, and they sit there kind of go, you know, my cat doesn't play. Now I find that one fascinating and maybe you can shed some light on it for me because I don't know any cats that, Wouldn't play. Is that because as as humans we're not good at teaching them how to play or, or to enhance play with them when they're younger.

And of course, you know, I mean sometimes you know you get people who, who adopt a cat later in life who, you know, it's, it's maybe the wrong time to be introducing play to them and they they maybe never understood that. But you know, how do we, how do we go about getting our cat population better at that sort of play? Yeah, absolutely.

With the slight caveat of, of cats with medical issues that may not want to play. For almost all cats, they will generally be at some level of desire of wanting to play. But again, it's just, and I, and I hit, it sounds a bit weird to say playing the right way.

There's no appropriate way to play. So for example, with those fishing rod, toys like we're saying, what people will often do is they will like dangle it right in front of the cat's, fear, and the cat. Maybe pull a little bit at it or won't be interested.

But the idea is that cats play behaviours are replicate of their prey behaviours. And if you can imagine a prey species like the mouse isn't going to run up to the cat and dance in front of the cat's face, that's not going to be engaging to them. So that difference and you sort of see if you've got a cat that doesn't really play, if you start teasing the toy about maybe 3 4 ft away and just sort of slowly moving it, stop it moving it, stopping it hiding.

Behind something much more like a, a, a prey species move. You'd see a cat at least look, and then once you have a cat that starts to look, then you've got the next step you can build into you sort of doing that until it sort of pounces. And it's again it is finding the right, things.

I, I heavily encourage people to get ping pong or beer pong balls, and especially if you've got wood floor or laminate floor because they just like bounce around for ages and people often buy those sort of like big chunky cat toys. And the cat sort of tries to move it and it doesn't really move. That's not exciting, whereas it moves the ping pong ball.

Oh my God, this is moving all over the place. It's the movement that really stimulates, the cats. So, a lot of the times it can take a bit of encouragement.

Sometimes if cats have been maybe punished for offering behaviours, they'll be less likely to offer behaviours, but that's something they can be sort of trained out of, but certainly. In the, the socialisation period, that 2 to 8 weeks, of the, the cat's life, we really encourage people to introduce novel stimulus like toys, so they start to be accustomed to sort of different things. But yeah, as, as humans, we can do a lot more encouraging cats to play, but we ourselves first need to understand why we're doing higher functions and then we can better help the cats with it.

Yeah, I, I think that's fascinating really, because you do, you do look at it and you sort of, you know, there's this assumption, isn't there, that, you know, in order to enhance an environment that an animal lives in, you need to be spending hundreds and hundreds of pounds on toys and plaything, when in actuality, you know, a ping pong ball and a a string on the end with some feathers on it does the job. And I, and I think, you know, there is that barrier to break down that, that, you know, environmental enrichment doesn't have to cost a fortune, and those of you that of course watch Blue Peter, as a kid will be at a distinct advantage, in that circumstance. And another thing I want to pick your brains on is multi-cat households.

And you, again, you touched on it earlier saying, you know, look, if there's two cats that that don't get on in a household. And you know, there's this this stereotypical vision in society of the the crazy cat household, where you know, there's someone living there and there's 27 cats in the same room and so on and so forth. But of course for the vast majority of people, they're single cat households.

There's some that are 2 and 3 cat households. Now, We've touched on the fact that cats are inherently solitary animals. So, so how does having a multi-cat household work, you know, is it, is it something that is to be encouraged?

Is it something that's to be discouraged, or is it something that can be, right, OK, we're in this circumstance, so how can we make the best of this situation? Well, that's a, yeah, absolutely a massive area we could almost come back and and and do a separate talk just on that. But in, in summary, it's super complex.

So cats are inherently associal animals, but we know they can form social bonds with other cats. People often refer to sort of feral colonies, but the makeup of feral colonies is quite specific. So you'll have, related, primarily related females, males often on the.

And only a couple of generations. So it's very different from a home environment where you're having a cat from So A and cat from Source B that you're, you're bringing in and throwing together. So we say in the sense of when we saying that they are inherently a social solitary, their welfare is not diminished by not having a companion.

So is it rabbits and, and some companies they're insisting that they must live with another conspecific. That is not the case for cats. The problem with cats is that they are often very stoic and don't show a lot of stuff.

So you have some homes where cats are living together, love each other, they're curling up, they're having a great time. You've small, well, I'd a relatively large portion of households where cats are sort of showing agonistic behaviours. I think in the PDSA report for 2018, it was about 21% of owners identified.

Actual conflict, but then you have this massive grey area of cats living together that probably aren't actually happy with each other, but are tolerant to varying degrees with it. Because cats aren't necessarily like dogs, you're not going to get as much of the, the growling and, and the barking and things like that. When we see cats hiss or swipe or fight with another cat, that is like the absolute peak, .

The, the top of it and there's lots of stuff underneath it. So what you'll get sometimes in homes is, is cats that are developing high swelling issues or cats that will spend a lot of their time hiding away. Recently, just before doing this call I was worked on a behaviour case, two cats, they weren't in conflict, but you could sort of tell that they weren't necessarily comfortable.

They've recently been separated within the same household, and one of the cats is suddenly a lot more. Affectionate with the owner, then would be with the other cat. So it can cause a lot of problems, but often ones that aren't picked up on.

So the big thing we sort of said to people is if you are looking to introduce a second cat to your home, you can't guarantee that they will like each other and you need to do a real proper introduction process, which we have on our website, cats protection, introducing cats, put that into Google, and it's sort of about doing a sense swap. Process and and doing a correct introduction and making sure you've got the territory set up. One of the biggest things we get is people saying, but the cats eat fine together.

And so you've got the cats are fighting a lot the other time, but the together relatively close to each other. But that is in part due to the fact that access to the football is more valuable than their fear of of the other cat. So it's like me, I find Go to the supermarket very stressful even before COVID, but I do anyway, because I need access to that resource and it's the exact same with cats.

I may be uncomfortable with this of the cat, but I need access to that resource. So they may look like they're eating beside each other fine to use air quotes, but actually it's causing them a little bit of stress to have to access that and obviously we know stress is cumulative so that it can affect other behaviours. So it's really complex.

We Very well, pretty much never would recommend getting another cat to resolve a behaviour problem. People often will go without my cats who are maybe as aggressive type behaviours or household behaviours will get another cat that will generally make things worse in most sort of circumstances. And something that, you know, again, you know, it's interesting to look at.

How we as humans approach things and invariably, and I hold my hands up to this, you know, we look for the easiest solution and, you know, the most stress free solution from our own perspectives. And of course one of the, the relatively recent dawns in, in medical management of things is these plug-in diffusers like the fellyway diffusers and so on and so forth. Now.

I just wondering what your take is on these kind of things, cos obviously, you know, anecdotally, when I speak to people, they go, oh, you know, I've plugged this thing in and it makes the world of difference to my cat. Now how much of that is placebo effect and how much of that is, is, is real impact? And I'm, I'm never quite sure.

But you know, are these things a. Are they something that helps as a solution, or do they simply mask underlying issues, or do, do we not know? I think it's a a a really interesting topic as I said this all the time.

It's all interesting. First, I should say Siva who make fellow I do support cats protection, so we appreciate that. In terms of the behaviour cases, we generally would recommend using feaway in the in the right circumstances.

We do try and let people know that it's not a cure-all, and actually I think if you read this on the literature, it says it's part of the solution you should speak behaviour modification. And so it can be really useful in some circumstances. It can also be a bit detrimental.

So oftentimes, maybe a cat's gone into the home environment and they've had the owners have struggled with an issue for maybe 3 or 4 weeks. And at some point they've been advised to get a fairyway and the fellyway hasn't made a difference because the only thing they've done is, is by a fellyway. Then 4 weeks later they're, oh my goodness, we've tried it.

Everything, and by that they mean they got the fairy way and because fellyway hasn't worked, and now I think, oh my goodness, this cat is unfixable in, in their words, so it can mislead people sometimes if, if they sort of think, well, this is supposed to be the, the fix and this isn't working. Conversely, on the other side, a lot of the times cats go into home environment and they just need to be left alone for a couple of weeks. But as humans, we want to be really active and we want to be, oh my goodness.

I need to try and and make this cat feel more confident. So actually, people thinking I'm gonna run through this 4 week course of a pheromone diffuser actually gives just the cat space to naturally come out whether the, the pheromone diffuser makes a difference or not. It just gives the owner time to step back a little bit and give the cat a sort of time to, to get together more confidently.

So certainly when it does work and when it is effective, it does seem to make a difference in, in making the cat feel. More confident, so we wouldn't necessarily say it masks it, but we would want to maybe be aware of what the trigger is if we can. So it's not a case of, the cat is, fearful of fireworks.

We can just keep plugging in the fairy way. What we should be doing is desensitisation and counter conditioning work around the fireworks as well as having the filly way on. But I think sometimes, and certainly my experience both with cats and dogs.

People are a lot more keen to buy something than to take time to take action. I'm sure you'll probably find that a lot with the medical side of things. If, if they can go, I could do desensitisation and kind of conditioning, or I could buy this product, they will generally tend to go more towards the, the buying the product.

So sometimes people can become more over-reliant. So from a human psychology point of view, it's sometimes more tricky than again, as most things are, than just the the cat point of view with it. Yeah, no, that makes absolute sense and of course, you know, I guess one of the big reasons that, you know, we're, we're here to chat is that obviously as cats protection, you are hugely involved with rehoming cats.

And of course that then throws a whole new spanner into the proverbial works, because of. Of course, invariably people are adopting cats that, you know, they maybe know nothing about their history and, you know, what, what's gone on in their past, and that side of things. Now, what, what can we do?

Obviously you've touched on the fact that basically not diving head into the cat's face on day one is always useful. What, what would someone who's adopting a cat, what bits of advice would you give them in order to gradually get to understand that cat and their, you know, their various isms, as we, we of course have ourselves as humans. What, what bits of advice would you give them to.

That that first month when they're a pet. There's, there's lots of really easy steps and again, you could apply this across multi-species, not just cats. And again, this is advice, hopefully vets and vet nurses can give out.

Firstly, less is more. 100% that is the case. Whenever a cat is rehomed, we recommend that they go into what we call a sanctuary room.

So a room that's been set aside in the house, it's got all the cat's resources in it and they sort of left in there for a couple of days to get familiar with the environment. Sometimes going into the home environment and all of a sudden being let loose everywhere and there's people constantly walking around and banging pots in the kitchen can be a bit overwhelming. So giving them that few days to settle into the sanctuary room, less is more.

Having the resources set up ahead of time, so you have your hiding place, and you have your off the ground access, you have your football and your water bowl, and again, learning what works. So we know that cats like to have the football separate from the water bowl and the water bowl separate from the litter and the literary separate from the food. So again, Having that all done ahead of time, so when the cat comes into it, one of the worst things that there is a little bugbear of mine is, is people, pick up a cat or again a dog, and they go, oh, I forgot to get this from pets at home.

So then they're walking into the pets at home with a cat and the cat carrier. There's just met this person for like the 2nd time. It's really noisy in the shop and they're going around picking up things and then they're going home.

By the time your cat's got home, it's, it's super stressful. And the other really important thing is from a human point of view. The cat doesn't know that they're being rescued.

So whilst a home environment is going to be theoretically and hopefully better than a pen environment, just for the very least, the amount of space, cats are territorial. So as we've mentioned, you're going to have a change in territory, so that is going to be inherently stressful. It doesn't matter if you've got the nicest home in the world and you're the nicest owner.

Now, of course, given if the cats had good socialisation has got good genetics, then actually the cat's gonna be adopt fairly quickly, but it's still to be assumed that the cat will be. Under confident. So those little steps starting to introduce enrichment feeding nice and early when you can, because it gives them confidence and exploring their environment.

So they go, oh, actually, if I interact with this, good things happen. So this isn't one big scary, terrifying place. It's actually good things can can happen with that.

And the really big thing. Is not having visitors in the first few days. So a lot of the time people bring a cat home, maybe not this year.

But people sort of want their friends and family to come round and it just, terrifies the cat and or the dog, too much. So we say, leave that for a week or two, let the cat settle in, and then gradually introduce other people as well. So essentially the COVID world is not a great year for social interaction, but a great time to adopt a cat.

Yeah, yeah, exactly that. I, people, the cat just tucked away, people aren't allowed to come to the house. That's exactly for a cat coming into the home is is perfect.

And one of, one of the big things that's always sort of been of interest to me, and, and I have to say I, I've found myself drawing a blank regularly when people talk to me about it, is the house cat versus the outdoor cat. And, and, you know, a lot of that is people's own, you know, when I look at my own interactions with pet owners previously and, you know, they, they've turned around and say, you know, my old cat got run over, so I don't want to let this cat out, and you can fully understand that, that reticence on their behalf. But is there anything?

Out there as evidence to suggest that having a house cat is deleterious to to behavioural sort of interactions with cats. I don't think there's necessarily research on the behaviour side of things, and I think that's more in part because researching cats is only starting to really build up heads of heads of steam. I certainly know certainly from things like exercise level point of view and from even just real basics like claw maintenance, have outside access makes a lot of difference.

And, and certainly cash protection we do say it's . Giving cats the option to go outside is better, not forcing them to go outside if they don't want to, don't make them. But unless there's a medical reason, like if they are deaf or blind or of other issues, to give that cat choice an option to go, outside.

Now, me myself, I'm not an anxious person. I let my cat go outside and I'm always sort of stressing that there's gonna be issues with other cats and traffic. And I think it's because I see so many of, of things and, and, and hear so many things, but I still let my cat out because fundamentally, She enjoys being outside and that sort of helps meet her needs in the terms of the need to display natural behaviour.

She, she goes around, she maintains this sort of home range, and she likes to explore. There's lots of, of little things to, to consider to keep the cat safe. One of the big things is we say is, is keeping the cat indoors at nighttime because that's probably when they're gonna be more likely in in traffic accidents.

And the UK, if you've got listeners worldwide, it might be different, but in the UK we don't have natural predators of cats. So we'll have foxes may pick over remains of a cat that was hit by a car. There's very unlikely, very few incidences of actually foxes pretty and on, on cats.

And the other big thing is is around roads. I, I forget the study, so I can't reference it directly, but there was a study whereby they find that actually, Roads that were fast with frequent traffic, cats were maybe more likely to get themselves in road traffic accidents. Some people think I've got a busy road at the front.

It's not suitable for the cat. If the traffic's pretty constant and it's not really a fast moving road, then actually cats respond to that better than maybe having used to accessing a road and crossing the road and cars only come past every and frequently and then all of a sudden the fast car comes past and that struggles then. So we would really, we do encourage where possible it's safe to do so, to do that.

If you are not letting your cat out with the stuff we're talking about earlier, enrichment feed and puzzle feeding, it's really, really important that you increase that. I say do it with cats that have outside access, but even more important with cats they have inside access, because otherwise they will be understimulated. You might start getting frustrated related aggression must might start getting misdected credit regression, you might just get a cat that's a little bit.

Depressed and obviously to cover all the admin side of things, we do say even with indoor only cats, get them a microchipped and making sure that they're treated regularly for parasites as you would an outdoor cat, because you, you can still have, parasites transferred in. And also your cat if they sort of sneak out someday, and they're not microchipped, it might be harder for them to, to come back. Yeah, I can certainly remember a few conversations over the years where people have had entire female cats, who are there, have, have, have had litters and that, but she's a house cat.

I was like, well she quite clearly, but yeah, there's always that sort of awkward, Virgin Mary moment with their pet cat, yeah. I think, you know, there's, there's so much we can go into. I mean, literally I'm, I'm finding myself ticking all of my, my own sort of insight boxes as we go on here, but what, what can people er anticipate getting from, from the, the, the feline behavioural conference, you know, what, what, what, what will they take away from that as a course?

Well, I think fundamentally one of the biggest things is just that consideration of areas they maybe haven't considered before. So we've got some modules, the most, what I think is one of the fun and most important ones is, is how cats learn and particularly as as professionals, I often think how can we maybe work with an animal if we don't fully appreciate how that animal learns. And also from an Mo's point of view is just interesting.

But it sort of covers what we sort of say, we've made it quite open and accessible. So there's things around that, there's around the the cats and multica environments, sort of the big hot topic issue, frustrated cats and sort of medical issues and things like that. So it's a real sort of grinding in cat behaviour and just almost getting people to switch their Breathing into that thinking, so it's is taking yourself out of that way of how you view cats actually starting to think of them as an animal that has welfare needs and as behavioural consideration.

So some of the conversations are quite theoretical, others are quite practical, like for example, the cat car that Sarah Ellis did, the working with frustrated cats and frustrated owners is. a really big one as well. And then at the end of the last session, we have a really interesting discussion panel, and it was about a sort of, cats in the 21st century and beyond the future of cats.

And it looks at all the things, the classic ones that come up in the veterinary side of things like brachycephalic cats, also the ethics of, cat ownership, and obviously the big one that's coming up, particularly in Australia and New Zealand is. Cats and wildlife and things like that covers up the cat cafes and things like that. So, again, I think lots of practical things to take away, but I think fundamentally, the biggest thing that we're sort of seeing from people is they're coming in, they're switching on and they're going, oh my God, there's a whole world of stuff that I've Be not considered, and it's something that we know from sort of surveys with vets recently is that they want more access to behaviour knowledge or something that we are sort of trying to provide.

So obviously, we've got the, the recordings of this one, I think are still available on the webinar that, but all being well, pandemic dependent, we'll hopefully run it again next year with two streams, we'll have that different level. So like this year, that's kind of introductory available for all level, but also this sort of maybe more in-depth stuff as well. Yeah, and it is like, you know, like you say it's, it's an area that is, I, I think grossly neglected is probably overkill, but it is something that we don't really, we don't really assign and attribute much attention to, and you think actually there's so much we can do.

To, to improve, not just the outcomes, but our understanding of what drives these things you say, you know, we have a lot more insight into those dogs, but, you know, as that cat population grows, then, you know, veterinary interactions are gonna be vastly increased proportionately with cats compared to dogs. And so I think, you know, that's, it, it's something that will benefit not only pet owners, but also veterinary professionals to to be able to manage those conditions and situations better so. Daniel, it's, it's great to chat.

I know for one I'm certainly looking forward to, to digesting some of the content and taking myself into, into these consultations with, with cat owners slightly, slightly more more, more sort of well informed to turn round and say, oh yeah, I heard this wonderful thing about this conference. Let me. Tell you this is gonna change your life.

And, and, and I think, you know, certainly we appreciate all of the efforts that you're putting in because, you know, ultimately, as veterinary professionals, we're a tiny part of, of a pet's ecosystem, the much more important component of that is that pet parent, the pet owner, however they identify themselves, you know, that, that, that, our job is simply to help them to facilitate. You know, a happier and healthier cat. So thank you for all the work you're doing.

And yeah, I look forward to seeing all of the content. No it's, it's, it's great and, and sort of being able to come on and just, share hopefully the, the enthusiasm for it. But, like you said, it's sometimes you don't know what you don't know until you sort of go in and you check it out and then you go, 00 my God, there's a whole world of stuff and, and like I say, it's in our part we sort of view it the same way that all the different stakeholders in the community can we access.

And so no, it's a, it's a real, pleasure to, to do the conference and, and I will say this unbiasedly that the webinar that we, we're absolutely wonderful to work with on it. But also sort of this is, as well, so just a great opportunity to spread the message and ultimately what we're looking for is happy cats and happy owners. So that's what we're working towards.

Perfect. I think that's a, that's a fairly decent aspirational goal, so good luck with anything and, and, and thank you for all that you're doing again. Thank you.