Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar be welcoming you to the final part of our series on the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has affected our pets, and today we're gonna be talking about cats and their caregivers. I've been fortunate during the pandemic to be adopted by a cat. So certainly that particular cat acted differently during the pandemic and .

He, he's been a joy turning him from a bit of a tiger into a bit of a pussycat, so it's been great to have him coming into the house. We're, we're really fortunate, I'm sure you're all aware that we've got Sarah Heath on this third part, this trilogy about the the pandemic. Sarah's gonna be speaking today.

I'm sure you all know Sarah is an RCBS and European veterinary specialist in behaviour medicine. Particularly looking at companion animals. Is one of my favourite speakers, I'm so pleased that we've been able to get her on, today and for the last few weeks doing the doing the webinars.

And of course this free webinar has been made possible by the very kind sponsorship of bought by Man. So Sarah, I'm gonna pass over to you, as always, looking forward to the talk. Over to you, Sarah.

Thank you very much indeed, Anthony, lovely to be here and thanks everyone for joining. I know how difficult it is to go to, things on a, on a school night, when you've all been busy at work and I know those of you working in the profession I know are absolutely snowed under, so really appreciate the fact that you've made time to come to the webinar this evening and also hello to anyone who's listening on the recording. So as Anthony said, this is the 3rd of the trilogy of webinars sponsored by bought by Man, and the last one we did was actually 3 weeks ago.

I find it quite hard to believe that it's 3 weeks ago, but it is. So I thought I'd start off by thinking about how things have changed in terms of the pandemic over that last 3 weeks. And what we find is that there has been, obviously an increase in the number of infections worldwide.

We've seen an increase of about 37 million so these this data I took this morning to make sure it was as up to date as possible. So about an 8% increase worldwide in the number of infections and an increase in the number of deaths, a little bit slower, so about an increase of 2%. And if we look at the figures for the UK, we find that the increase in infections is slightly higher than the worldwide figure standing at about 9%.

But with an increase in the number of deaths of again, around that 2% the same as the worldwide figure. So it's certainly not over despite what we might have been told. We won't be testing after tomorrow in the UK mostly won't be testing because it won't be free anymore, and I think obviously we just will not know how many cases we've got rather than there'll be a decrease.

So the pandemic is still with us, it's still happening. But obviously the lockdowns have stopped and we're now in this query new normal. What we're gonna be looking at though today is the emotional impact of the way in which the pandemic has been dealt with.

And we talked when we talked about dogs three weeks ago about the fact that there are triggers for emotional impacts, specifically from the lockdown effect, changes in social interaction and changes in routine have very definitely had an effect on the human population. And we've got a great deal of information about that human impact. We also know that there's been an effect on non-human animals that they have emotional states just like we do, and that those are affected by the environment, both social and physical, that they live in.

But we also know that the majority of the really good scientific work that's been done looking at the impact of the pandemic has primarily been done in dogs, and we talked a lot in the dog webinar about the work by Rowena Packer and her group at the RBC here in the UK and that the great work that they have done. Looking at dogs, but less so, worldwide on actually looking specifically at cats, there is research and I'm gonna look at it tonight and look at some of the things we do know. But a lot of the research has been done on pets in general, with the information about dogs and cats being presented together, in papers that were there, there's lots of differentiation between the species, which is quite interesting.

But what I'm gonna do is look at the literature as it stands, what we can see about the impact of the pandemic, on our feline population, and then think a little bit about the emotional impact as well. So if you think about pet adoption, we have this term pandemic puppies, and obviously that's nice and alliteration, which makes it easier for us to remember. It's a term we've adopted to describe the cohort of dogs that have been obtained by people during the pandemic.

But what about cats? Have cats increased as well? Well, there's a few studies.

This is one of them, and there's a few others looking at adoption figures, and they've shown, quite convincingly the difference in searches in terms of internet searches where you look, put in adoption of, and now again, this is the research that looks at dogs and cats together. But in this particular study where they look at research, relative search volume, sorry, looking at internet searches between the same month in 2019 and 2020, they showed that for both dogs and cats that had increased by up to 250%. So yes, this doesn't separate out dogs and cats, but It certainly shows that the interest in acquiring a cat certainly rose during 2020.

And then we also find that the cat adoption figures in terms of the RSV remained high all the way through December 2020, whereas the dog adoption levels did start to decrease. If we look at the effect of the pandemic on cat numbers, we can also get information from the cat protection report. They produce a report every year and in 2021, they showed that of owned cats, I put that in inverted commas, they do know me well, now I don't use the word owner, but.

10.8 million cats had homes in the UK, and that was an increase of 600,000 from 2020. So in 2021, cat protection tells us that just over 1 in 4 UK households, that's about 26%, own a cat or care for a cat, and each of those cat caring households had an average of about 1.5 cats.

They also looked at the impact of the COVID pandemic on acquiring a cat, and showed that 7% of the caregivers had had stated that they had a reason related to the pandemic for obtaining a cat during this period between 2020 and 2021. Such as being furloughed or spending more time at home, and that's consistent with what we found as well when we were talking about the dog, population. Also, another thing that was highlighted by the cat protection report was this limited access to vets during COVID-19.

They found that there was a decrease from 86 to 86% in 2021 rather than 88% in 2020 of cats being neutered, and that leaves, although it doesn't seem like a great. Percentage difference when we look at it in terms of the millions of cats who are muted or unmuted within the UK. That shit figure is 9.3 million muted, but 1.3 million remaining unmuted.

And of course, in terms of the population of cats, we all know. How prolific they can be if they're left unmuted. And so the fact that we have got quite a large number of cats who are not muted and maybe more of those in 2020 due to the limited access to vets for neutering, it's potentially having an impact as well on the feline population.

First I've been looking through the literature to see what sort of effect we can see on cat, cats and their caregivers as the title was given due to the pandemic, and we can really see a global effect. This is a paper that I looked at on caregivers' perceptions of having a cat during the pandemic. So what was it like to have a cat?

How does it impact on themselves, but also how They perceive that it impacted on their pets. And this is a global study, so responses in this study came from 25 different countries. It was relevant to the UK, so 7% of the respondents in this had a, were from the UK.

And the average age was about 39 plus or minus 12 years. Mostly they had one adult cat, interestingly, in this study of mixed breed, which they've had for at least a year before the start of the pandemic, and some of them. We did have pure breeds, Maine Coon, and Siamese were specifically reported.

And overall in this particular study, just to put it in context before we look at the findings, most of these cats have stayed indoors during the pandemic. So, if we look at this At this paper in a little bit more detail, they asked questions about the impact on the caregivers and also on the cats, and when they looked at, feline caregivers, they said they found that keeping cats during the pandemic didn't really, Create a lot of problems for the caregivers. The one thing that was mentioned by people in this study was that they had some difficulties in acquiring veterinary care, and that's the theme that we will also see in some of the other publications.

The majority of the respondents though in this study reported no change in their cat behaviour, and if they did report a change, that small percentage, they were mostly changes which they . Reported as being positive in nature and they used words like he was calmer or she was calmer or they were more playful. And interestingly, when we think about that impact on cats potentially being more playful in the cats protection report of 2021 that I just talked about, they stated that caregivers spent more time playing with their cats during the pandemic, so they said that the percentage of caregivers who played with their cats at least twice a day rose from .

61% in 2020 to 64% in 2021, and therefore it may be that actually having more opportunity to play because the caregivers were providing that interaction may have been significant in the increase in the perception that cats were more playful. So here we have the data from this paper from the cat owners' perception paper, and you can see here that 67.3% of them know they didn't observe any changes, and then that calmer and more playful here being accounted for 12.3% and 7.7 respectively, and then.

It wasn't all about things that we might see as being entirely positive. They also did have things in these, in these higher percentages, so we get down to very low percentages as you can see as we go down this list. But if we look at the the.

Top end in the higher percentages we did have more frequent seeking of close contact. Now that is reported in the in the narrated part of the paper as being more friendly and more interactive so seen as being positive. But more frequent vocalisations, again, that could be seen as being positive by the caregivers, in terms of more interaction with the with the pets, but there's no mention in this paper as to what those vocalisations were or the context of them.

So we can't really identify which emotional motivation would have been behind them. There's another paper that does look at cats again as part of a cone species paper. So the one we just talked about was just about cats.

This one, which is based on information from Spain published in the Journal of Veterinary behaviour. This one looked at pets, but it did tease out the information between the two species. So although they're.

Covered in the paper, they do talk about them separately and they also talked about the same sort of questions as we had in that global paper and this one just from Spain showed that again quite a high percentage, 46.3% in this paper of cat caregivers reported that they haven't seen any significant change in the behaviour of their pets. We also here see the more relaxed and more calm interpretation from the caregivers.

So again, more in the more significant percentages, more relaxed 21.7%, but also seeing that more attention seeking, more demanding, which is similar to what we see in that other paper of more approach behaviour also being reported in this paper related specifically to cat caregivers in Spain. In this study, they also looked at whether the caregivers perceived that any behaviour problems that they already had had worsened during the pandemic, and interestingly, they found that actually the people who were reporting that the problem had got worse were very low.

So again, consistent with what we're finding in the other paper, that generally, feline caregivers' perception was that their pet that didn't show any dramatic change in behaviour in terms of the onset of new problems or the worsening of behavioural issues that they might already have. When they looked at the whether or not caregivers had concerns about the effect of COVID-related confinement on their pets, they found in this study that actually the biggest difference between dogs and cats was in the category of none. So when did they have concerns about the, the effects of COVID on being a dog caregiver or a cat caregiver, you can see that more cat caregivers reported that they did not have concerns than the dog caregivers did.

And again, this is consistent with The other papers they found in the Spanish population that the commonest concern for cat caregivers was about their inability to access veterinary care and concern about whether they could access education. And this is the same as in the global study, and also a study in the US, which we're just about to speak about. So in terms of the impact on the caregiver, looking at whether or not they found the the behaviour of the cat to be better or worse from their perspective, this is a study that we mentioned 3 weeks ago when we talked about dogs again, it's another one of these studies that looks for dogs and cats together.

And it's from Australia, and they also noted cats, those with cats felt their pets had become friendlier and more used to humans due to continued proximity, so more tolerant of interactions. We'll see in a minute when we look from the feline perspective as to whether that may be a difference in interpretation between the species. The US study that I just alluded to before is this one, which was looking at the impact of COVID on cat guardians, specifically in relation to veterinary issues.

So they were looking specifically at whether cat guardians had any concerns or any fears about veterinary care or about their ability to obtain what they needed to care for their cats in terms of food or in terms of pet care products. What they found was that the primary concern was about the availability of their vet, so that they could get to see the vet, which is a US based study, as I just said, whether that was for emergency or non-emergency care. They were very concerned as to whether they could access their vet.

When needed. And the other concerns that we saw in this study were that they were worried about being able to afford veterinary care because, of course, people were in a situation of, of sort of worry about their employment at this time, lockdown, unable to work, etc. And also some fears about being able to obtain cat food or supplies, but whether transport of goods to stores and the fact that you had to get them online and be delivered to your homes and these sorts of things were also causing a degree of concern for caregivers.

When we look at other impacts on caregivers and we go back, and this is the study, the global study that we mentioned, they said that 2/3 of the respondents indicated that they, the caregivers themselves saw some significant benefit in the terms of. Of their own psychological tensions because they had a cat with them during the pandemic. And this was also reflected in the Australian study.

These words of being happy, feeling good, feeling grateful, lucky, comforted were the sorts of terms that were used by caregivers who were talking about the positive impact of having a pet with them during the pandemic. Now again, the Australian study doesn't differentiate. In this statement between cats and dogs, but it does talk about, feline caregivers specifically, reporting a positive impact on their own emotional health during the pandemic.

A number of studies have also looked at the impact on emotional health and particularly on something termed loneliness that defined as a specific form of mental health impact from the pandemic. There are lots and lots of studies out there about the impact of loneliness on humans and and all sorts of information about the human impact from, you know, changes in our behaviour and our ability to perform species specific behaviours during lockdown. Most of the studies have looked at pets as a group though, not differentiated again between cats and dogs.

This particular study is interesting. It looked at whether pets were significant for older adults specifically. They were talking about the fact that in general, older adult humans reported less of an impact of loneliness than younger.

Humans, and that was related to difference in expectation of social contact and social interaction. But what they did find was that pets played a unique role for older adults during those very early stages of the pandemic, and they were said to be a comfort and a source of companionship and a source of of support, although the study did also. Say that sometimes they reported that they were stressed and concerned about their pets during the pandemic.

And again, if we look at the range of studies on this, it was mainly about that aspect of veterinary care provision for their pets. So when we start to look about the specifics of cats in this situation, one of the things that did hit the headlines was this implication of whether pets could be relevant in the transmission. Of COVID.

And although when this was first hit the, the news, there was information about dogs, there was the, were these headlines, sorry, about coronavirus can infect cats, dogs, not so much. Pets can catch COVID from owners and a picture. Of a cat and then what we had was the incident of confirmed COVID in pet cats.

So we had these sorts of headlines, COVID-19 confirmed in a pet cat in the UK. Pet cat becomes the first animal to test positive. The COVID-19 and when this happened, we did start to see some other sorts of headlines which were starting to imply that there may be some specific impact on cats.

Officials advise infected owners to keep cats indoors to limit the spread of coronavirus and your pets can catch COVID, so these sorts of headlines. Led to actually crashing of the BVA website with caregivers very worried about COVID-19 and it was really important that the BVA stepped in to confirm what they had actually said because there was a little bit of confusion. The BBC reported that veterinary advice was to keep all cats indoors, and that certainly was never said by the BPA.

They only said that in relation to infected households or households where people were already self-isolating, so it was never a blanket recommendation to keep all cats indoors, but certainly it hit the headlines. And so this concern about zoonosis. It was something that that raised its head, particularly in the context of cats.

And so there are a couple of papers that look at this and the potential for both dogs and cats to be involved in transmission and therefore being potentially a zoonotic risk. What this paper found was that cats are highly susceptible to SARS SARSOV2 infection, and they have a prolonged period of oral and nasal viral shedding, but that's not accompanied by clinical signs. This study also concluded that they are capable of direct contact transmission to other cats, and they can develop.

A robust neutralising antibody response and that that generally prevented reinfection following a second viral challenge. But importantly, in this study and in other studies that I don't have time to go into this evening, they also concluded that there's currently, and that was at the time of publication of this particular paper, but no evidence that cats and dogs play a significant role in human infection, and there's been no evidence to contradict that viewpoint since. So when we look at the papers, we then start to just ask the question, did it have an impact?

Did the impact of zoonos's concern actually influence caregivers and how they behaved? And if we look at the global paper, they did ask questions about this, and what they found was that 79% of the respondents didn't. They didn't take any special measures or special actions in respect of their cat in order to prevent spread.

21% of them did, and you can see here the sorts of things that they did, but we're getting into very low numbers when we get down to giving up the cat forever or leaving the cat in the care of other people. We're getting down into ones, even getting to the point of letting the cat out less frequently, only 9 of them, slightly higher here for avoiding the cat contacting other people. Obviously not easy if the cat has access.

Outside, but if they're indoor cats, that would be possible. And no more outdoor access beyond the boundaries of the house and garden was more likely to happen, but even so, we're looking at relatively low numbers. We did have disinfection of the pores or the coat or actually washing cats was mentioned in a couple of other papers as things that caregivers did during the pandemic to try and reduce the potential zoonotic impact.

But people parti participating in this global study really reported that they were quite reluctant to do anything that would mean they had less physical contact with their own cats, but actually one of the reasons why they found having a cat an official. During the pandemic was to have companionship and to have interaction and therefore they were reluctant to consider actually limiting that physical contact despite any concerns that may have been voiced about zoonotic risk. And actually in this study, they then looked at if they did, if people did make changes, they did have restrictions in their interaction because of zoonotic concern.

Did that have any effect on whether they perceived that it was difficult to care for a cat during the pandemic, and they did find that these people who did take measures, they have, they were about 3.8 times higher. In their likelihood of experiencing difficulty or reporting that they were experiencing difficulty, and also a behavioural change in the cat was more likely to be reported by these caregivers who took restrictive measures, even though overall, as we just said, the majority of caregivers reported no significant change in the behaviour of their cat.

So we can see that there is some literature out there, it's a little bit limited in terms of cat specific information or cat care giver specific information. But certainly we can see that in general for the caregiver's point of view, they didn't find it so stressful looking after cats during the pandemic as they did dogs, but they generally didn't report major changes in behaviour within their pet cats, and that their one of their main concerns was the lack of accessibility of the veterinary profession. So what about the emotional impact on cats?

Well, caregiver perception, as we've said is that cats have been less affected than dogs, and there's been a perception that if they have been affected, it's primarily been positive. They've talked about an increase in interaction with the caregivers, they talked about an increase in acceptance of human interaction and handling. We talked about an increase in play related behaviour.

So all of these behavioural signs would suggest an increase in desire seeking motivation, so cats that are spending more time in the company of their caregiver, and particularly with caregivers who were busy, so in. These particular pictures here, caregivers who were working and and worked a long time ago in the 80s by Dennis Turner at Zurich shows that when cats were able to initiate the contracts themselves, they were more likely to spend longer in the company of their human caregiver. So the fact that people were busy at home, were on their laptops, and as is illustrated by this middle picture, the cat could make a decision to go and sit with the human, while the human was nicely occupied.

That may have been something that would be beneficial for cats and actually result in them spending more time with their caregiver. These are my two cats, or my 3 cats at the beginning of the pandemic, sadly we lost family during the pandemic, but they actually all 3 of them, got used to going for a walk during the pandemic because of the fact that I was walking from home a lot more than I usually do, and all 3 of them, as illustrated in this picture, started coming for a walk every day, and the two that are still with us, they have continued that, and still come for a walk, every morning. And which is something they started during the pandemic.

Also, let's look at the description from caregivers in the literature that their cats were calmer during the pandemic. Now, one of the problems with this is that we don't actually have any definition of what that means. And of course we know that when animals are in a protective emotional bias, they can go into states of inhibition, for example.

There were some descriptions from some of the papers of increases in vocalisation, in demanding or frustrated behaviour or irritable behaviours, and it's possible therefore, when we look at the terms that are used, although this hasn't been looked at in detail because the definitions are not there, for us to start to think, well, could there be features of lockdown that could have led to concern or an increase. In protective emotional bias for these animals. So what sorts of things might you be thinking about?

Well, first of all, caregivers being at home more of the time, and, caregivers who love the cats desperately. We talked about the fact that some of the time they were sitting at their computers, and definitely that could be a situation where the cat is in control, but also these caregivers. May have been in more need of tactile contact because of not being able to have tactile contact with humans, and we know that human beings like to have physical contact, and so it's possible that that would lead to an increase in direct physical contact with cats, illustrated here as being not always beneficial for the cat.

We also, of course, that there were children at home for longer periods of time, and children were at home and being homeschooled, of course, so then they might have been sitting still, in the way that the people on their laptops were, but we also know that children were in the home and more active in the home. There may have been more noise and certainly more physical handling. Surfing during the early part of the pandemic when we had very good weather was a lot more activity in gardens, and that could be relevant to cats who have outdoor access because of the fact their passage tracks through other neighbouring gardens may have been much more difficult because of the fact there was a lot of human activity outside in gardens during that early part of the good weather.

So I want to now look at how Sorry, those sorts of changes may have had an effect in terms of emotional states of the cats looking at the five pillars, which I know you'll all be familiar with. So, The 5 pillars come from the environmental needs guidelines published by ISFM and AAFP and they're listed here. So I want to think about these 5 pillars.

In relation to the so-called health triumph, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with, the idea of a health triad is that there are 3 equally important components to health, physical health and cognitive health and emotional health, all of which are interrelated with each other, and healthcare involves all three of those components. But when we start thinking about whether the health and welfare of cats was affected by the pandemic, using the five pillars, we can look at how that is influencing healthcare. Because there are healthcare implications of those needs, fulfilling the pillars leads to optimal feline healthcare, because if we don't meet the five pillars, it has implications for their physical, their cognitive, and their emotional health.

So the impact of environmental optimisation, that's making sure those 5 pillars are all provided for. Are emotional, so we, when we have a good optimal environment, then we're going to have increased security, and that means that there's less need to have protective emotions if you're in a safe location. Means that there's more positive bias because you're providing for things like predatory play.

One of the pillars is to provide for predatory behaviour and play behaviour, which obviously is bizarre seeking motivation, so increases that positive bias. It provides outlets for natural behavioural responses through things like predatory play. And also improve physical health, because if we decrease unnecessary protective emotions, we also reduce the impact of chronic physiological stress, which has the potential to impact as we're going to talk about in a second, on physical health.

So when we think again about the five pillars, I'm just gonna highlight two that may have been affected by the pandemic. So first of all, providing a safe place. We talked about the fact there was more human activity.

People were in the home for more of the time during the day, children were more likely to be there, the place was likely to be more noisy, people were likely to want more interaction, so. It is certainly the case that provision of a safe place may have been more difficult during that period of lockdown. And what is the emotional impact if we fail to provide a safe place for our cats?

Well, the first thing is there's an increased risk of fear or anxiety motivation because being safe and secure and in control is a big part of feeling in a positive bias if you're a cat. There's also the potential that there could be some frustration because seeking out a safe place in which to rest is involving the desire seeking system, and if that's not possible, if they can't find somewhere safe, then frustration is the emotion that would be triggered. Obviously having a safe place also is necessary in order to be able to sleep effectively, you know.

The cats need between 12 and 15 hours of sleep in every 24, and that needs to be good quality sleep. And we also know that there are certain features of the environment that are necessary in order for that sleep to be of good quality. So they need to be able to elevate.

They need to have access to resting places that have some sensation of being enclosed, so dips, things like hammocks and tunnels and those sorts of things. And obviously, there's a potential during the pandemic for those not to be as easily accessible or not to be peaceful and quiet when they were able to be active and not being able to get away from noise as well as physical interaction. And then if we do have an increase in fear, anxiety and frustration, we have a potential for certainly more into cap social tension if they're living in multi-cap households.

And also in cat to human tension and a reduction in the quality of the human-ca relationship and also the quality of life of the individual cat. And we may have behaviours which are associated with attempts to increase their level of sensation and security. If they don't have a safe place easily provided, then scratching behaviour and marking through urine deposits, it may increase as a result of feeling less safe.

If we look at the other pillar that I'm going to highlight today, that's the provision of consistent and predictable human cat social interaction. So what does that mean? Well, we know that the social relationship with people can be quite difficult for cats because we're fundamentally different in our social behaviour.

So we are a socially obligate mammal, they are a non-obligate social mammal, so they are social, but they don't need social contact in order to survive. And one of the big differences is that when social interaction occurs in dogs, sorry, in cats and people, it is different in the way it occurs. So people are what we term low frequency, high intensity interactives.

Don't see our friends all week and then spend Friday evening with them or don't see relatives for a long time and then go spend a weekend with them, but cats base their social interaction on high frequency and low intensity, so completely the opposite. Humans also expect greetings to involve physical contact, whereas cats are happy to just say hi and keep moving. And of course we also have an instinct to show affection through close, tight physical contact, cuddling, cuddling of humans is very important and something that lots of the research into the impact of the pandemic on humans.

Has picked up on that lack of physical contact and hugging was something that was quite detrimental to the human population. And those who had pets, not just cats, but pets, in general, were wanting to have that physical contact, and our instinct is anyway to pick our animals up and cuddle them sometimes in ways that cats find quite difficult to deal with. Humans of course have this desire for close physical interaction.

We see being on our own as something that is negative, something that's unwanted, that being happy means you have to be in company, and that was why the pandemic has such an impact. The cats are not obligately social, and they can view time alone as something positive and time not alone, not having peace and quiet, potentially negative. Also, we have some differences in relation to the emotion of social play.

So social play is something that persists into adulthood if you're a socially obligate mammal, so that would be the same for dogs as it is for us, but they also engage in social play throughout life, whereas for cats, social play diminishes in cats after about 2 to 3 years of age, and object play becomes the predominant form of play. So when social play is attempted without appropriate context, that's when it becomes perceived as a threat, because social play involves the rehearsal of the delivery of and the reaction to threats. So I've illustrated that here by a rugby game where a tackle.

Is seen as something that's perfectly acceptable, it doesn't induce a fear anxiety response because the context of the rugby match tells us that this is social play, but a tackle on a high street is something very different and now would be perceived as threat, would result in a fear anxiety response in this individual and potentially an accusation of assault. And the same thing can be a problem when we try as a socially obligate species who see social contact play as being a very positive thing, the same thing can happen in this misinterpretation that the cat sees that interaction as a threat. And so obviously during the pandemic, when we had more people at home, particularly children at home who are more likely to want to engage in that sort of physical play, there's a potential that there could have been some conflict from that.

Humans and feline perceptions can lead to a compromise of natural feline behaviour, so cats are often denied the opportunity to get away from social contact and spend time alone because we want to engage with them all the time, protect them and give them good quality social contact. So, if as we predict, there may have been some changes in social interaction with humans during the pandemic, what is the emotional impact if we don't have predictable and consistent interaction? Well, again, their anxiety and frustration, frustration.

Now of the fear anxiety system, so of, of not being able to protect themselves, but also potentially frustration of desire seeking as well, and an increased potential because of that, of challenges to the human cat relationship and a problem for the quality of life of the individual. So interestingly, when we looked at the information in the papers about the pandemic, changes in behaviour were not frequently reported by the caregivers, but one thing that does appear to have been reported is a potential for changes in physical health. So I want to finish tonight by looking at this potential for emotional motivation and arousal to impact not only.

On behavioural responses, but also on what we term physiological stress, and physiological stress has the ability to impact on physical health and on diagnostic investigations, as do behavioural responses and displacement and drainage behaviours which we're not looking at now. And of course it is important to remember that this is a bilateral relationship, so physical health, of course, also impacts on emotional motivation. And arousal.

Let's just think for a few moments about physiological stress. This is mediated by two different systems. We have the SAM system and we also have the HPA axis.

So these are two different ways in which the stress response is controlled, and the SAM axis mediates the initial response to an immediate stressor, and it's associated with the catecholamine, so adrenaline and noradrenaline, and of course that leads to the readiness to respond. So we see lots of physical manifestations of this acute response to stresses. So we start to see things like pupil dilatation, increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, changes in vasoconstriction, particularly within the.

Skin, of course there's a change in demeanour that they're more alert and we see some changes in parameters, so glucose, fatty acid concentrations, etc. So we see an impact in this immediate, this rapid response through the SAM axis. But then we also have this HPA axis, which mediates the slower response to stress.

This is the one that happens within a few minutes, but also can extend to hours or days. And this is the one that we will also be thinking about in something like a pandemic situation. The hypothalamus is involved through the release of corticotropi releasing hormone and vasopressin as well, stimulates release through the pituitary gland of adrenocortotropic hormone and goes on to lead to the production and release of glucocorticoid from the adrenal.

Glands. And it's those glucocorticoids, of course, that then are involved in the feedback mechanism. But when we're in a state of chronic stress, that's when we start to have abnormalities of circulating glucocorticoids, and then we have an impact on the physical health of the individual.

So, when we're thinking about these cats potentially living in an environment that was compromised during the pandemic for the reasons that we've just looked at, then we need to think about the potential for physiological stress to have an impact on physical health. And we need to investigate the potential for this in certain types of diseases, so mucosal integrity, immune function, pain perception and weight management, and I'll, I'll look at those in a bit more detail in a moment. The other thing to think about is the signs of chronic stress being related to repetition of ill health, so repeated presentations of ill health is a flag that would lead to us considering potential emotional health factors in physical disease.

So what does this mean in cats? Persistent negative emotion then can result in diseases associated with breakdown of mucosal integrity. That would be things like the bladder, the gut, the skin, the oral mucosa, so things like FIC and obviously FIC is very well documented as being affected by physiological stress.

Also infectious diseases, so we think about the many ways in which cats potentially suffer from infectious disease, not just what we might readily think of in terms of viral infections, FLV FIV, cat flu, etc. But also remember that there's an immune function impact in terms of parasitic infections as well, fleas, for example, worms as well, endo and dptoparasites. So we have the potential that if these animals are in a state of, of chronic physiological stress, there may be implication in terms of health, such health problems that are reported.

Pain-related conditions as well, neuropathic pain illustrated here with a case of feline or a facial pain syndrome in a Burmese cap. But other, obviously other pain related problems, we know that in cats osteoarthritis, so inflammatory pain associated with degenerative joint disease is incredibly common in cats, over 12, over 94% of cats have OADJD. So if we have a potential that these cats were in an environment that was greater in terms of physiological stress, then the potential for that pain to be more significant to them is something we really need to consider.

And also weight management issues. We know that being in a physiologically stressed state has an effect on the way in which nutrition is, is utilised and the proportion that's actually laid down in terms of adipose storage tissue. So is this relevant to the pandemic?

Well, certainly some of the headlines that have been shown are suggesting that it was having an effect not only on their emotional state, but thereby on their physical health. Headlines like why the pandemic was bad news for your cat. There were reports, reports of increased incidents of FIC, and one study.

Reported that vets were saying there was a 39% rise in cases of urinary problems during the pandemic compared to 2019. Most of the reporting, if you start searching for this, is quite anecdotal. There's quite a lot of articles, press releases, and newspaper articles, etc.

Suggesting that there was an increase in physical health problems. In the cat population, but quite a lack of clear research findings. And I think this has been one of the problems with cats, as I said earlier on, a lot of the work that was done on the pandemic was either looking at dogs specifically, or looking at pets where dogs and cats were lumped together, rather than doing specific research on cats.

So my conclusions were are that the impact of the pandemic on cats has received much less attention than the impact on dogs, and where cats have been studied, they've often been considered . With sorry, yes, they've often been considered with dogs as as a global pet population rather than being looked at in their own right. But the research that has been done does suggest that cats seemed to cope better as reported by their caregivers, so the human perception was that cats certainly seemed to do better, and cat caregivers also reported that there was reduced tension in their human households due to the presence of the cat, and more feline caregivers reported that than canine caregivers.

Obviously, it's possible that those two things are actually related. The fact that people found that they reduced tension meant that they also felt that the cats coped better. So they're seeing it very much from a human perspective.

We know that the COVID pandemic, of course, has been challenging on a great number of levels. There's undoubtedly been a lot of impact on us as humans, but there has been an impact on non-human animals, and it's very likely that that impact is going to carry on for quite some time, and as we reminded ourselves that right at the very beginning of this evening, this pandemic is not over yet. So the impact on cats has definitely been different, and it's likely that that is because of their species-specific behavioural traits and their resulting species specific needs.

But I think my conclusion really about cats is that we need more species specific research to really understand the impact of the pandemic on this species. So thank you very much indeed for listening. I'll give you the details as I did in the other webinars of our behavioural advice subscription service.

If you're having more queries within general practises and you're interested in getting more advice and some information as well about our referral practise. That's fantastic, Sarah, thank you so much for that. That was a, a brilliant session.

I, I don't know where people think that they adopt cats, cos I, I do think it's the other way around, but apart from that, I would agree with pretty much everything. I don't know whether we've got any questions. That was, Sarah, my, my thing, as you know, of this cat that I've acquired over the pandemic, adopted me rather than the other way round.

Yeah, we definitely did. That like. And I think, I think we know that he made a decision to come to maybe a, a, a house that was quieter and calmer and gave him more, more downtime.

Exactly, and it's always on cat's terms, isn't it, you know, he will, do his own thing and then you're sitting there minding your own business and suddenly he jumps on top of you and wants to cuddle. And that's kind of, I think, . You know, they, they do do it on their terms, don't they?

What so much you know debate as to really how did they do by the pandemic, because we have that dichotomy of the, the passive caregiver sitting at their computer, busy and distracted and therefore possibly much better in terms of the cat's needs and then the children. You know, being at home and wanting lots of interaction with the cats. So we probably did have quite a difference in, in the way that it impacted on cats, but sadly we, we didn't have people looking at cats in the same way as they did with dogs.

Yeah, and, and actually, you know, that mental health, you know, my, my wife Rachel, was allergic to cats. We've got her on the special Purina diet, but . Not her, the cat, sorry, but you know, vicariously, she is on the diet and she's loved that sort of interaction that she didn't think she, you know, would have and and you know, wasn't a cat person, but actually, That, that interaction that you get with the cat and you know, that ability to stroke on their terms and things is, is actually very therapeutic and good for our mental health as well, isn't it?

Yeah, there's been some studies outside of the pandemic, very clearly showing the benefits of having that tactile interaction with another species. And in many different ways. So I don't think there's any, any dispute that having pets in our lives has been shown in many studies to be beneficial for our physical as well as our emotional health.

And, obviously, the pandemic has has had benefits there. There have been benefits therefore in the pandemic of having pets, and that comes through in just about every paper you read about the pandemic, that there has been a beneficial effect for humans, I guess then we have Just think about has there been any impact on the non-human animal in that situation that we as a veterinary profession need to be mindful of and concerned about. I'd be interested vets who are here tonight, you know, they put in the chat box, but whether they feel that they saw or or have been seeing an increase in the physical health presentations I've suggested by some of the more anecdotal reporting that I talked about.

Yeah, no, it, it's be interesting to see what people think on, on the in the audience and please feel free to, to add in questions. I'm filling in. I've noticed a couple of questions coming in.

Nicholas said thank you. My cat would sit on the laptop to stop my partner working, so yeah, they do almost sometimes want that attention, don't they? And they, they kind of say, right, OK, now is the time.

On my terms that I want that attention. Let's see, we've got a couple of questions come through, . Right, so, somebody, anonymous attendee, if you have two trays for your one cat and it doesn't ever use the second, would you recommend removal or just keep it, for the rule of thumb, reading numbers of resources?

If you've got one cat and 2 trays and they never use the second one, there's really no need to have it there, probably as long as they have access to outdoors so they can have an alternative. So that second tray in effect might be the garden, in that situation. Great, it's an indoor cat only, I think she's just said, so, or yeah, so, so in that case, I mean if they're not using it at all and it's only one cat, you may well be fine with one with one tray.

Saris asked the question, are there any post-pandemic behavioural changes noticed in domestic cats in countries which have opened up? That's a really good question. And again, we're starting to see some research now in dogs into into what's happening as we're coming out of lockdown.

But again, we're not seeing the specific cat research unfortunately. It's something I really think we need to be doing, particularly as we come out of lockdown. So that's a really important point that we said last time, 3 weeks ago when we talked about dogs that actually coming out of lockdown may have, you know, certain problems for dogs related to withdrawal of social contact or less availability of social contact.

Now obviously, if we think About the fact that increased social availability might have been problematic for cats, you might then assume that they would actually find coming out of lockdown easier, but it will depend as well on whether we're looking at kittens or whether we're looking at cats, kittens who were required during lockdown or whether it was cats who were already there. But unfortunately, Saria, the problem is that that I don't, I can't find any really specific studies about that yet. In terms of whether there's been any noticeable behavioural changes coming out of lockdown, I really hope someone is going to start doing some, some work specifically on cats.

Barbara's er experienced the same thing as me. She said our feral cat on the farm has adopted a few of us, so we've become his caregiver. That's nice and cheap.

Also says, brilliant webinar, thank you, and you've got your full title, Sarah Heath. So there you go. So, obviously, as I often say, you can't hear the tumultuous applause, Sarah, but it's been very well received.

Sharon here has just said thank you very much from Germany. I experienced an intensive interaction time during my corona infection quarantine with my cat. He has stayed with his new behaviour and is extremely interactive.

So there we go, he's changed a bit. I must admit when I. And, and I think this is interesting.

When I got coronavirus in October, I deliberately didn't interact with him because of course I'd heard of those cases, and that he is an older cat where obviously humans have passed their coronavirus onto the cats sometimes with, with bad results, haven't they, Sarah? Yeah, there is some evidence of, of transmission as we've said, cats are generally not not clinically ill. And certainly the research that I've mentioned that one paper, but there are others that also suggest that that actually their contribution to the issue of transmission is probably very, very low.

Yeah, they seem to be sort of almost an end. Host, it doesn't seem to go back the other way, does it? But not from the research that's been shown and it looks as if they can between cats and that we can pass it to them, but, and they can get it from, from environmental contact, but yeah, it, it, the overall conclusion from the papers that I've read is that it's not a significant factor.

Yeah. Chantelle was asking about the recordings when they will be up because she missed a bit at the beginning, usually up within 24 hours and, and Dawn's pass that on as well. So just for those of you who, you know, may want to listen again or tell friends and colleagues about it, we should certainly have it up by end of play tomorrow.

And obviously the other two webinars are on there if you want to look at them, if you've missed them. Let me see, are there any other comments anybody, want to tell us any more information, Elizabeth saying thank you very much, brilliant webinar. We have, Chantal saying, thank you very much, from a very early morning Brisbane, Australia, so thank you so much, for, for coming on from, Australia.

Is anybody else listening anywhere, exotic? Kian's got a question, can cats or any animal get COVID and what meds to take or vaccine shots to give them? So, sorry, do you want to answer that?

As, as we've talked about Kiana, yes, there is evidence of animals, contracting COVID, but in terms of the effect on them, in terms of, physical illness, it's very unlikely that they get sick with it. In terms of vaccines, no, as far as I am aware, no information about vaccinations being either necessary or or commonly used, or treatment because we don't see physical signs with these animals, although obviously symptomatic treatment would be necessary if there were if there were clinical signs, but in terms of things like antivirals and And vaccines that we're looking at in the human population. No, there's not information about that, being necessary in our, in the patients in the cats that have been reported as having had the virus.

Thanks Sarah. Sarisha's saying she's listening in from India, we've got Leora listening in from Israel, Tara from Oak Bluff, Manitoba, Canada. And then me listening in from California as well, so people listening in from, from all over, which is great to hear.

Laura listening in from New Zealand. I know it's one of my favourite places, isn't it, Sarah. Timaru, particularly, yeah, one of my, yeah, I, I, I absolutely adore New Zealand and normally I go every other year, but obviously I've not been since 2019, so missing New Zealand badly, yeah.

Cathy's listening in from Ireland and Barbara's in York, lovely er city in in the north of north of England. If there are no more questions, I think I'd just like to thank you, Sarah. I always enjoy listening to you talking behaviour.

So thank you so much for the 3 webinars, as I say, they are available as recording. So do feel free to, to go and watch them again, or watch the ones you've missed or tell your friends and colleagues about it. Of course this wouldn't be possible without the really kind sponsorship of bought by many, so I'd like to thank them for making that possible.

And I suppose the best way to, to finish is Nicole has said, New Zealand misses you too, Sarah. I Nicole's a good friend. Hello, Nicole.

How lovely to know that you're there. I, I miss you too. And it's it's nice that we are beginning to come out and be able to see people, albeit that those numbers are still very high, but everybody keeps safe and hopefully see you on a webinar very soon and maybe Sarah, I might spot you at .

A little spot just down the road for us where they they occasionally play a football game or two. I, I'm sure we'll be at Anfield together very soon, Anthony. Thanks Sarah, thanks everyone for listening and and thanks brought by many for making it possible.

Take care, good night, bye bye.