Good evening and hello everyone. Welcome to this webinar entitled Why Are Cats Always the Underdog. My name is Alexandria Lipka.
I am the deputy editor at the BVA and I will be chairing this evening. Firstly, I would like to thank both the BDA and Mars Pet Care for sponsoring this webinar tonight, and we have two excellent speakers lined up, Doctor Maggie Roberts and Doctor Dan O'Neill. So this session aims to understand why cats are always considered the underdog, even when they are understood and valued so much by human society.
This session is designed to challenge people's preconception about cats and give us all an opportunity to discuss how the veterinary profession can help cat owners to understand their pets better, resulting in a better quality of life for this often misunderstood and mysterious species. Focusing on cats versus dogs, the two species have obviously evolved very differently with dogs as obligate social species evolved from wolves and other wild dogs, and domestic cats evolving from a small solitary predator. Both cats and dogs are selectively bred by humans, but this has only occurred in cats quite recently.
In human society, dogs are seen to have a stronger bond due to their social behaviour, whereas cats are seen as much less social and less financially valuable. Cats are a prey species totally dependent on themselves. They don't tend to show vulnerability and thus do not demonstrate pain and illness overtly.
This leads to the perception that they need less care and often get less pain relief. But I'll stop there. I won't go into too much details, too much background details.
I think we all just want to hear what our speakers have to say on the topic. And so just a bit of housekeeping before we begin. The order of service for tonight is that we will hear both the speakers talks, one right after the other, and we will reserve questions for both the speakers until the very end.
If you do have any questions, there should be a Q and A box at the bottom of your screen, so please just type your questions into that box and I will read them out. And now to introduce our first speaker, Doctor Maggie Roberts. Doctor Roberts qualified from Edinburgh and spent the early part of her career in small animal practise where she developed an interest in feline medicine.
She has also worked overseas in Malawi and Australia and was appointed the first cats protection veterinary officer in 1997. She worked in private practise for a while, but then returned to cats protection in 2006, where she is currently director of veterinary services, and is heavily involved in the charity's work on cat welfare, neutering, advocacy, and education. She is a founder member of the Association of Charity vets and the co-editor of the BSAVA manual of canine and feline shelter medicine.
And it should come as no surprise that her professional interests are in shelter medicine and feline population control. And so, Doctor Roberts, I'll stop talking now and pass the mic over to you. Thank you very much, Alejandria.
That's really kind. Yes, I've recently changed my title to Director of feline welfare, which I've gotten since I did my bio, just cause I cover so many things at cats protection. But, yes, I am, the official mad cat lady.
Anyway, I'm gonna just Get rid of myself while we talk. Right, OK, so why are cats always the underdogs, or. Or are they, are they, in some respects, cats are not the underdogs, but we'll mention that later on.
So I was gonna mention, sadly, I am, I've been in the profession for a very, very long time, and I was at vet school in the 1980s, and this is a, a picture of me, doing my first lambing job. And a vet school in the 1980s, we, we taught far more about horses and farm animals than anything else. Fair bit about dogs, but mainly medicine.
We weren't talk much about behaviour or anything like that. And cats were always the afterthought. They were always the odd little paragraph, at the end, you know, there'd be a couple of pages of notes on something like the canine liver and then a tiny little paragraph about cats.
And these were the two books that sort of kept us going, canine medicine and feline medicine and therapeutics. That was pretty much the only feline textbook. And cats just weren't really a big part of our, our course.
And obviously, things have changed a little bit, but not. Probably as much as would be ideal. And there was so much we didn't understand about cats.
We didn't have FELV vaccines then. We hadn't even heard of FIV. So, things have changed a bit, but certainly, we were not taught a great deal about cats.
So, why are cats thought to be so much less important than dogs? Or, or, or certainly in society, they tend to be. And we have to go back to the evolutionary origins of the dogs.
Dogs are descended from wolves and other wild dogs, and, they are obligate social animals and a pack animal. And the packs are usually, a group of, of related, animals. They are totally dependent on others for their survival.
They must hunt cooperatively. A lone wolf doesn't usually do terribly well. And because of this, they really have to be able to communicate with each other really well.
So they've evolved really complex facial muscles, so they can have all sorts of different facial expressions, and also use their variations in voice and stance as a Ways to communicate. And they're very good at reading the body language and facial expressions of other dogs. And obviously, we know now through research that also they can, read our facial expressions very well.
So they've got all the skills to be a really social animal. And they've been domesticated for a very long time, 150 to 30,000 years. And obviously, as you all know, dogs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
And this is partly because of their genetics, allowing huge variation. But we realised that they were very sort of social. All that they're easy to train.
And so we've selectively bred and trained them to do all sorts of different jobs for us. I mean, the old cave paintings show them hunting, but obviously, they'll herd, they'll guard, they'll be assistance dogs. And, are really, valued as their.
From a social point of view and their ability to, be at ease with company with us as human beings. And so they've become part of our lives for many, many millennia. And cats, on the other hand, have descended from, the African wild cat.
And this is a picture of one, and I always think it looks very much like one of our cats today. It looks like a sort of Siamese cross tabby. So the cat really hasn't altered very much, certainly not sort of physiologically and not really even behaviorally, since, the, the African wild cat was first in those areas in North Africa and the Middle East.
And it lives, and obviously, it's still around today. It lives in this really, really barren, sort of semi-desert arid environment. And there aren't that many rodents in that environment.
And a, a cat needs 9 to 10, mice or rats or whatever every day. And so, in order to get enough food, the cats had to have a really big territory, because there was such a sort of sparse. Amount of prey.
And so they developed as being solitary and highly, highly territorial. They want to keep other cats out of their territory so they get enough to eat, and are totally dependent upon themselves. They are small, they're also a prey species as well as predators.
So they have to be really good at at hiding what's going on in terms of pain or illness or anything that might make them seem more vulnerable. And they don't really want to come in contact with their own kind very much, other than for mating and reproduction, because there might be a fight. And so rather than having complex facial muscles, they do communicate through scent.
And so they'll do a lot of scent marking, be it urine spraying or scratching, or, or facial rubbing. But they don't have that range of facial expressions because they don't have that facial signalling. And obviously, when it comes to humans, they've been domesticated for a much shorter time with dogs.
They were actually probably longer than originally we thought. We always thought it was about 50 to 6000 years, but there is now fossil evidence that they've been domesticated for about, 10,000 years. And obviously, we think about the Egyptians, but also there are other areas in sort of Crete and, other parts of the Middle East where, cats had become domesticated at this sort of period.
But we didn't selectively breed cats to come into our, our lives. It really started that we were farming and producing grain and therefore it increased the number of rodents that were around our settlements. And some of the slightly more confident African wildcats came into our communities because of the rodents, and people thought, oh, this is quite a good thing and encouraged them, but we didn't deliberately Breed them to be different from their original, state.
And so they haven't really changed that much since that time. It's only in the last 200 years we've selectively bred them, and that's usually for appearance rather than anything else. And, and, and sadly, they've been not very well understood and have always been viewed as this quite mysterious creature.
So why are dogs considered to be more important than cats? Well, they certainly have a higher social status, and I don't know whether the fact the royal family are always very keen on dogs and not terribly keen on cats has anything to do with that. But obviously, dogs are perceived to have quite significant value, both sort of financially and, and because of their ability to be trained, because they're working animals, it's an investment to train them and keep them.
They are recognised as being really good companions due to that social, they're socially obligate. And it's always been acceptable to like the dogs, including for men, and obviously that's been a bit different with cats for, for many years. Also, dogs, because of the way they reproduce, you can actually live with with unneutered dogs.
It's a bit different with cats because of how many kittens they produce. And generally, they're easy to train. And in terms of treatment from a veterinary perspective, on the whole, most dogs will be reasonably easy to, to treat.
And because of that sort of the body language, etc. We do perceive them to be easier to understand and and certainly there's been a lot more research involving dogs. But also, there are aspects of dogs that are negative that are also why they are considered more important or, or, their impact is considered more important.
Obviously, they can bite, if they cause road accidents, it can cause considerable damage and they might be, worrying sheep, etc. So some things like legislation or, or, there's more to do with dogs because of those things. And why are cats seen as less important?
Well, obviously, cats are prolific breeders. They, can produce lots of kittens very, very quickly. And so sometimes they're just viewed as a bit of a pest, and certainly they're cheap, it's easy to get another one, easy to replace.
And just being involved with pest control is always sort of thought to be a bit of a low status thing. They're much easier and cheaper to look after than dogs, and because they're free roaming and seen as very independent, often people think they don't need as much care, and sometimes to their detriment. They have been recognised, obviously for their companionship, but there's still that tendency to think about mad cat ladies.
And, you know, even jokingly, I even say that, that myself. Cats are not perceived as being so dangerous to people. And so in terms of sort of legislation, there doesn't need to be so much.
But also, cats are really misunderstood. Often their behaviour, which is just natural cat behaviour, can be seen as spiteful or disobedient because they don't, they're not so, sociable because they haven't had to evolve to be that way. And often they're much more difficult to actually treat or examine or medicate.
There's all the jokes that that constantly come up about how to give a cat a tablet and you know how you go away and put sticking plasters on your hands. And that whole thing about them hiding pain and distress means that often, people don't recognise when they are ill or they are in pain, and often don't give them adequate pain relief. And there is this whole history and perception of them being associated with witches and the occult, and, there has been persecution of cats over the years.
I certainly wouldn't have done very well in the Middle Ages. I am a left-handed woman with a black cat, and I deal with medicines and I live on my own, so I think I'd have ended up on the ducking stool. So, and cats, dogs were seen to need more protection at an earlier stage than cats.
The RSPCA was founded in 1824, and, and to be honest, to start with it was to protect aquids, working aquids, but very quickly they came to . To help dogs as well and and Battery Dogs Home was founded in 1860, so there were quite a lot of organisations that were looking after starving dogs or perceived as as starving dogs, the, the first name of the Battery dogs home, . And it was much later that they were seeing that sort of necessity to give some sort of protection and care to cats.
Cats protection that I worked for was formed in 1927, less than a 100 years ago, as the Cats Protection League, we dropped the league quite a long time. OK. And International Cat Care was formed as the feline Advisory Bureau in the 50s.
There are some quotes from, from people who were involved in finding those organisations that the cat was a much neglected animal and there was little research. I like this quote. There are two recognised diseases of cats.
One is cat flu and the other is not, because there was so little, research and study done on cat. And it's the poor relation of the dogs. So again, even in terms of their care much more neglected.
When it comes to disease, as we said, dogs are much more overt in in signifying that they are suffering pain or they're ill, they show stress in a much more overt way than cats. And if they get ill with an infectious disease, they tend to die or get better. Whereas cats, tend to be have a carrier state much more commonly.
And this really goes back to their evolutionary past. If you don't come in contact with your own kind very often, then it's, better for the viruses, really, if, they, you do have a symptom that carry a stage, and then, on those odd occasions where you're perhaps fighting or mating, that's the time to pass on the diseases. And obviously indoors, the carrier state is much less common.
And cats don't tolerate certain drug groups quite so well, particularly the non-steroidals. And so it has been perceived that they're much more difficult to, control pain in, although obviously now there are a lot more drugs that we can use. And this sort of neglect of the species had actually led to people who are interested in cats realising that we had to do something to actually try and get them a little bit more on the, on the clinical page, so to speak.
And now, there is a whole recognised specialism of, of feline medicine. And organisations like Cat Protection and ICA Care and the American Association of Feline Practitioners in the US have started really driving cats specific information. We have various conferences like our annual Cat behaviour conference.
There's the International Society of Feline Medicine has a great conference every year. But it's been a lot of work to get these to be taken seriously and for it as a specialism to, to have its own, it's own area. And, obviously there are some aspects of veterinary medicine where cats are not the underdogs, and I think neutering is definitely one of those areas.
Obviously, it's a special interest of mine. And when you look at these pictures, I just think, thank goodness, I never have to stay another bit in my life. I don't actually do much surgery at all now, but when you look at that nice tiny little kitten uterus, you just think how much easier it is to deal with that than the big, fatty ovary of the, the bitch.
Obviously, cats are really, really good at breeding, and so nutrients incredibly important. We know that up to 80% of litters are unplanned. So it's really lucky that actually it's easy and quick and cheap to neuter cats.
And so many more cats are neutered than dogs, about 85%. And, and there are lots of, of low-cost clinics. Cats protection, we generally help to neuter around 150,000 cats a year for people on low income.
It's been slightly less during the pandemic, but that's on normal total. And it's great to, because often the first time vets see a cat is when they come in to be neutered. So it's a really good opportunity to talk about preventative healthcare, vaccination, microchipping, etc.
But certainly, when it comes to neutering cats, I'm not the underdogs. And I did want to mention prepubertal neutering. It's obviously something that we, as an organisation, do try to promote.
Unfortunately, at the moment with the financial crisis, we are getting more and more people wanting to give up their cats, because they can't afford them. We're full of every single one of our sites. We have waiting lists at every site, and so do all the other charities.
So keeping control over the feline population is incredibly important, or else we're really going to have, a real crisis when it comes to cat welfare. So it's really important that we do neuter cats, but also that we do it in a really timely matter, a timely method, and that we do do it before puberty. So before 4 months in cats.
Although there are concerns with doing prepubertal nutrient dogs, particularly with certain breeds and orthopaedic problems or Although some of the evidence isn't isn't great. With cats, there's no, real evidence for short or long term detrimental effects to, to neutering prepuberty. We have to just be a bit careful about obesity as we have to with any neutering.
But it is extremely quick and safe to do early neutral in cats. Obviously, you do have to be mindful of the kittens slightly different physiology. Obviously, they can lose heat more quickly, so we have to watch out for hypothermia and we have to provide heat pads, etc.
They can get, hyperglycemia, so we don't starve them for very long before the procedure, no more than 3 hours and feed them immediately. They're, they're recovering. But generally, they recover, quicker than other cats.
Sometimes we'll do a mom and her kittens, her 8 week old kittens and the kittens are awake and bouncing around far, far earlier than the mother is. And many vets are happy to do it. We've done a survey and 86% of vets either do need a cats from at 4 months of age or, or possibly younger, or would if the practise allowed.
So we really want practises, particularly the corporates, to have this as their policy. That we will neuter earlier so we can try and get a better control of the population. We are about to shortly release a paper that shows that if you're neutering the same number of cats but you do them early, you will have a much more significant effect on the population.
And if anyone's interested in any more information on this, there is a website, called Cat Kind. We've got the link here. It's a collaborative group.
It's really providing a database of practises that do undertake prepuber nutrients so that owners and charities can find them. But also it has resources for vets. So all the sort of evidence, references, etc.
Videos of the procedure and, and FAQs, etc. Are all there. Just gonna quickly mention legislation.
There are far more laws around dogs than cats, but, it's not necessarily about good welfare. Obviously it's much more to do with human safety and preventing bite injuries, etc. And also protecting property.
And owners are expected to have control over a dog. Obviously cats, because they're free roam, there's not the same, necessity under the law to control and obviously, here we have a picture of Larry, one of the world's most famous free roaming cats outside number 10. Recently, we have had some really good successes with, focus of legislation that is concerned with welfare.
And for both dogs and cats, which is great. Obviously, we've had the Animal Welfare Act since 2008, but recently, we've got a ban on the commercial sale of puppies and kittens other than directly through the breeders, ban on third party sales. And, in Scotland, there's licencing and.
For establishments for both cats and dogs. We have had to really, really fight to get cats included in these bans and do keep working on this. For example, with the cat kept animals bill, there's going to be a ban on importing cropped dogs, but we're having to fight to try and get declawed cats included.
And many of you will be aware that shortly, hopefully, fingers crossed, the government before the end of the year have promised to make an announcement about the compulsory microchipping of owned cats. And so here we have a picture of the the speaker with his lovely cat called Aley talking about microchipping. So Obviously, as time has gone on, cats' value has actually increased.
There's more neutering, with us all probably having, less space in the future, smaller houses, etc. Busy lives. Cats probably do fit in, to our human lives a bit better sometimes than dogs in terms of the requirement of slightly less care.
They're very popular on social media. I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing. But now they are considered members of our family, and it's more acceptable to like them.
You don't totally get, treated as a mad person because you like cats. And our knowledge has really increased, particularly from a veterinary perspective, although I think they're still very misunderstood by many owners. And, there's more, sadly, there's more pedigree cats.
There's about 20% of cats now. I much prefer a mogi personally, but, that sort of recognition of the breeds probably has increased some of the rays in their status and obviously more recognised in legislation. So I'm now going to, hand over to Dan to tell you a bit more about the research side, and then we'll have some questions, so I'll stop sharing there.
Hi Maggie, that was absolutely wonderful and I learned so much. So let me share and then I could just, I need to introduce you, Dan, so let me yeah, let's do that beforehand. Maggie got an introduction, so .
I think you do yours. Thank you very much, Maggie. Just a few things we've gotten a few questions already on your talk.
For anyone who's joined us a bit late, we will be answering questions for both speakers at the end of both talks. So if you do have any questions, please put them in the Q&A box, which should be at the bottom of your screen, not the chat box, the specific Q&A box. All right, now, our second speaker is Doctor Dan O'Neill.
Doctor O'Neill graduated from Dublin vet school, working in general practise for several years and also running his own companion animal practise for 12 years. During this time, he earned qualifications in pharmacology, general practise, feline practise, and dermatology. In 2009, he undertook an MSC and then a PhD in veterinary epidemiology at the RBC.
During his PhD, he developed the Vet Compass programme, which is a companion animal surveillance system, a not for profit research project focusing on improving animal health, and which aims to investigate the range and frequency of companion animal health problems and identify important risk factors for the most common disorders. Currently associate professor in companion animal epidemiology at the REC, he is also co-lead on the Vet Compass programme. He chairs the UK brachycephalic Working Group and is a founding member of the International collaborative on Extreme Conformation in Dogs.
Having co-authored a couple of books on breed related issues and welfare in cats and dogs, as well as over 120 papers on the epidemiology of both cats and dogs, whose research interests lie in a diverse range of epidemiological studies based on primary care, veterinary clinical data. And so now, Doctor O'Neill, I will pass them on to you. Thank you very much.
I have a little phone here. Let me start the timer and then it, it'll remind me when to stop. Now I'm going to try and share a screen.
So Alexandria, tell me if that's coming up. Yes, I see it. Perfect.
OK, thank you very much. And thank you to Maggie. I thought that was fascinating.
I'm going to explore the same topic obviously. Why are cats always the underdog with a question mark because maybe they're not. And I'm gonna look at it from the perspective of, my current.
Iteration in life as a researcher. Obviously for the 20 years before this, I've been in primary care practise, so coming out the world very much like Maggie was from a clinical perspective. I've, I've put this little graphic here in the corner, with the dog winning the gold medal and, maybe at the end, we'll see if, if that's still the case.
In a way, this question kinds of sets itself up almost as, a story, a competition between cats and dogs, a drama, even a movie. So I guess if we were to look at this question from the movie perspective, we would have to think about what makes a good movie and, and what would we need to do to create this story. So, so every good movie needs a protagonist.
It needs the hero, the one we're going to cheer for and we love the cat. So let's cheer for the cat. But every story needs a villain as well.
The the evil one who's trying to crush down our hero. So here it is, boom. The cat, the poor cat is the underdog.
We need the inciting action. We need the trigger for the story. What's going to get our emotions going.
So it may well be that you're looking to, to find some evidence on some issue with a cat, and you just can't because the research isn't being done. Cats are the underdog. Researchers aren't interested in them.
The story then needs to evolve, getting worse, less and less information on these animals and an explanation as to why, what's wrong with the cat? Why are researchers just not interested? And then usually, usually unless it's Tarantino, there'll be a happy ending and maybe things will work out OK.
So, anyway, that's kind of the scene we're gonna set here and, and let's see how this works. So, so maybe settle back with your, your popcorn and, your Coca-Cola, and let the movie begin. If I could roar like a lion, I would roar now.
Instead, maybe it's a cat, meow. So here's our, our film. Why are cats always the underdog?
Why? Why or why? .
I guess we should introduce our two stars formally. So this is, this is the cat, the, the, the hero, and Felis catus. And this is the dog who, this is the protagonist and villain, Canus Familiaris.
And almost straight away you can start to see something happening here. Felis catus is very cold name Canus Familiars, familiars from the Latin part of the family. So we're almost starting to see maybe why there's a difference between these two species.
One is more independent, the other is a member of the family. And I think Maggie went into this. So, from a research perspective, this is what triggered my interest and why, I asked a question about cats as underdogs.
I, I was researching for this book, 2018, so four years ago. And I was doing this with Alex Goffin and Alison Thomas, and, we were looking at all disorders with evidence of, existence and predispositions in, in dogs and cats. And this book had 305 pages.
But when I broke it down by dogs and cats, dogs had 203 pages and cats had 30 pages. And that doesn't seem very much. So there was almost a 1 to 7 ratio of research published on cats and dogs and breed-related predispositions.
So, so this starts to suggest there's something really wrong in our relationship from a research perspective with cats were just not doing it. But yes, in the, in the wider world, say in the UK for example, there are as many domestic cats as there are dogs. Give or take, there's about maybe 10 million of each.
So, so why aren't we so interested? Maybe it's down to the, the types of research that are done, and maybe it's the research itself and the methods that are at fault. So there, there's kind of two types of research.
There's, there's live research where you have live cats and live humans directly interacting with each other. So let's call it face to muzzle, research, so live, and then we have data. Research.
So it might be where you just have data from surveys or data from clinical records and it's on your computer. So we could call that in silico research. And maybe it's just cats are less suitable for this sort of research or maybe it's something deeper than that.
But let's see, let's think about these types of research. So there's a backstory. Maggie went through some of this, but I think it's really important.
The wider humans outside of those who own pets often think of cats and dogs as sort of swap out pets. You know, if I have a dog and it dies, I can just get a cat the next time and vice versa. You know, they're just a pet, they live in the house.
They're they're kind of equivalent, and I can swap one out with the other. And As Maggie explained, from a domestication point of view, that's kind of understandable because they were both domesticated maybe 10,000 years ago. Domestication was a slow process, so it's hard to say specifically the moment they were domesticated.
It was a process. But the process differed exactly as Maggie explained. Cats, cats kind of ended up coming.
Around human settlements for rodent control, and humans allowed them to be there because they performed the function. They killed rodents. And that function wasn't dependent on those cats displaying dependency in humans or human analogue social traits or it it really was quite utilitarian based.
It was just more the cat performs a function, therefore it can be allowed. To exist around my settlement. And in the lives of the cats, those owners didn't really play a central role.
The owners just existed there, but they weren't really a major part in the cat's social system. Dogs were different though. Again, the domestication was around the same time, but, some people would argue dogs domesticated themselves.
They, they were attracted towards human settlements. They scavenged, they got food from them. But there were different social species and they started to develop attachment behaviour towards humans.
And, and the humans selected for dogs that were more friendly, had a better temperament. And over time, the human started to offer this safe haven effect for dogs, where the dogs actually treated humans as a safe spot and, a much different and much deeper human, animal bond developed. Dogs displayed this compatibility from social perspective.
And some people would say. For most dogs in their environment, it's the human that is the very epicentre of their environment. Those dogs live for their humans, and, and they will repeatedly chase a ball or chase a stick and bring it back hundreds of times just to get the pat on the head or the reassurance from humans.
Much of the time a cat isn't going to do that. So as Maggie said, there's a difference between dogs and cats. But what does that mean for today's pets and, and how does that matter for research, Well, for today's pets, let's imagine companion cats and dogs.
So let's forget about the feral ones for the moment. And we might think that they're swap out, they share a similar ecological niche. They both live in houses.
They, they might even have the same environment, living in our bed, same routine, being fed when we're fed. Received the same social stimuli, so strokes, and we might talk to the animals, cats and dogs. So, so it might seem as though they're the same, but there's, there's differences as well.
It's not quite as simple that the relationship between cats and their caregivers isn't quite all about the social and the the security that's provided by the. The, the cats are, are there really to provide companionship for their owners, even though the cat and people might say it's similar to a dog relationship. It doesn't seem to be quite like that.
The cats maybe tolerate their owners rather than actually living for the presence and the reassurance of their owner. Dogs dogs are different. They interact with.
As a social unit and the bond between dogs and humans goes outside the house as well. So we take our dogs out for walks and they go into novel situations and they enjoy that most of the time. And that's different to cats.
And that's important when it comes to research. And it may be part of the reason why there's, so much less or research done in cats and dogs. So for research, then, how does this matter?
Well, city cats, for example, a lot of city cats are typically kept indoors all the time. And in some countries that's almost mandatory, and often their, their time outdoors or certainly their time being taken outdoors as opposed to going outdoors. It is only to visit someplace nasty like maybe a veterinary clinic or a cattery.
And when cats are exposed to novel situations, they're often unhappy about it. They lie or stand or freeze or retreat from unfamiliar humans, . And this really means that a lot of the research that has been done face to mole on cats often is done in their home environment to avoid all these issues of, the cats being unhappy or uncomfortable in a laboratory or a veterinary clinic situation, maybe giving results to to the research that actually aren't reflective of how they would react in a, in a calm home environment.
Dogs are different dogs socially, social well socialised dogs. They're the novel environment for them is really just another day. They're taken out every day on walks.
They meet new people. They're very happy to approach, jump up, lick new people. They're very happy to go to new places a lot of the time, most, most dogs.
And, and this, this means that They're different when they come to research. So, so what does the data say on this about research? Well, here's a study where they explored 62 cats, 32 experienced cats, who've been socialised and mixing with a lot of people and 31 inexperienced, and then 27 family dogs, so roughly 3 groups.
They put these animals in an unfamiliar room and first, had the owner, approached them and tried to feed them, and then an unfamiliar experimenter. Their behaviour was watched from a distance for the 1st 5 minutes and then the humans, tried to initiate the the contact stroking and feeding. For the dogs, 27 dogs, all dogs passed the habituation test.
All the socialised dogs were happy to have a human approach and feed them. In the cats, only 60%, only 40% passed 60% failed on the first occasion. .
So the cats are different, and that means when it comes to research, they're different. And the level of experience of the cats wasn't that relevant. So the more experienced cats, and, even the older cats didn't necessarily give them an advantage.
In fact, the younger cats passed more. So, so this means that they, they, they just are different in a novel environment. They're different when it comes to research.
Dogs, dogs are happy to explore. They leave the starting point. Cats don't.
They stay in the box. And any of you working in general practise who, who, spend a lot of your day trying to tip cat boxes up and reach in and try and get cats out of various. Cat boxes will understand this.
From the cat's point of view, it is very sensible to try and stay in the box. From our point of view, it, it, it sometimes can be a challenge. So what are the conclusions from this, from a research point of view?
Well, it means if we are to do research on cats, they need extensive habituation. We need to give them lots of time and repeated experience in a novel environment. And that's problem.
From a researcher point of view. From the cat's point of view, novel situations are stressful. So we have an ethical issue doing, research on cats, face to muzzle.
And cats, as Maggie said, they're, they're a prey species. We often think of them as a predator because they kill mice and birds, but, but they themselves are a prey species and they behave like a prey species, exactly as Maggie said. So the, the kind of summary is that cats live next to humans, but not really with them.
And cats don't really experience owners as a safe haven. So they're not going to just approach lots of different humans and jump up on them and lick at them and, they're just not small dogs, they're just different. And furthermore, the, the, research says that the ageing and experience doesn't mitigate the stress.
So the cats aren't getting calmer necessarily as they get older. So this is fundamental consequences for using cats in research and maybe part of the reason. So in our film, this is the, the bad bit, it's kind of saying, yeah, there's some problems with these cats.
So that's face to muzzle research, but. How does that apply to in silica research? Because if we have data on cats and dogs, even if the cat is stressed in the real life situation, surely there should be just as much in silica research.
Well, let's see. This is the vet Compass programme. This is the programme that I work on at the Royal Veterinary College.
So just to say what it is, it's, it's essentially veterinary practises collect clinical data on their computers. They do it every day, writing clinical notes, writing in the breed, the age, the treatment, . Vet compass just collects these anonymized fields in the background.
No extra work from the vet practises. We clean those data and merge them into a single database, and then our researchers work on those data to answer questions and feed information back to the veterinary practises, and we feed it out to other stakeholders as well. In the UK at the moment, Vett Compass, expands across about 30% of the veterinary practises, all these ones here in blue.
Covering primary care, referral, charity, out of hours, and, currently it's about 20 million companion animals, about 8 million of those are cats. So huge database, should be lots of research done on cats, lots of clinic measurements such as body weights, clinical notes, and half a billion treatments. So this is, this is big data.
Is huge. And, and those data have been used so far to publish over 100 peer-reviewed publications. So if this is in silica research and if there's really now no difference between dogs and cats in terms of stress and bringing them into the laboratory, well, we should see equal numbers of papers on cats and dogs.
But we don't. I did this, at the weekend. I was looking at the the counts of paper as well.
99, that included dogs, 16 for cats. So some papers had both, so these numbers add to more than 100%. But again, we're almost seeing that the 1 to 7, not quite, but almost a 1 to 7 ratio again.
So even for in silica research, cats are the underdog. Why? Why or why?
Well, we could delve into this a little bit deeper and one way of looking at it is, given that we're talking about films here and using the film analogies to to think of chicken rum. And we can think of. Animals is just wild animals running away from man, but, there was an undercurring, a recurring theme in chicken run where, the story was that these chickens are organised.
Oh yes, they're up to something quiet. I'm on to something. They're organised.
I know it. Well, do we think that maybe cats and dogs are different in terms of organisation? .
So we know that dogs are better research models, that's fair enough, because they're calmer for face to muzzle, but. When it comes to funding, research does tend to follow funding, and dogs do seem to be much more organised. When we look at the major funders, we have many of them that are dog only.
Dogs Trust, Kennel Club Charitable Trust. Some of these other ones, cats protection, obviously cat only, but some of these other ones still will favour canine research. So maybe another reason.
That cats are underdogs is just the basic structure of funding of research, and that the research follows the funding. But is there more to it? Is there a little bit deeper?
And maybe it comes down to the nature of how we keep these animals. Maggie talked about breeding and, turning these cats into certain breeds. Well, I, I looked at the data set, 2019 data set, 2.2 million dogs in it.
And when I, categorise those animals by typical breeds, 76% of them were of a recognised breed. Yeah, so that means that mankind is controlling how that dog looks. When I did the same for cats, and the data set for cats was 1.2 million animals in 2019 in fact compass, only 11% were a recognised breed.
So maybe this actually is the issue that we have. Maybe it's that dogs have are more breeded, in other words, of a breed than cats. And when we look at the top breeds and cats, we can see that after you get to, The 4 breed down here we're below 1%.
So even among the top breeds, we're really only seeing 1 or 2%. And then below that we're getting to tiny levels. So maybe it is just that cats from a research perspective have less variety.
Most cats are just a cat, and maybe that's less interesting from researchers. When we look at dogs, we can see a totally different story. Huge array of breeds, all of them with high percentages, because most dogs are of a breed, and huge variation in the size.
Labrador to Jack Russell to English cocker spaniel. So wonderful from a researcher point of view, lots of variety. And that's the the nature of research.
We like differences because we can compare between things. But Maybe it's even more than that. Maybe it's deeper, still related to breed but deeper.
And this comes down to DNA and the variation that we have. So across the whole world, there is 8.7 million species, 5400 mammalian species.
In the wild, we have dogs who who evolved 5 to 10 million years ago. But when we look at wild dogs, they're almost all the same. It doesn't matter where you go on the planet, and coyotes, wolves, dingoes, they're all the same.
And then something happened. We domesticate dogs, and then we started to choose dogs for certain functions and they, they still kind of stayed the same, . But, but we started to, to push them into functions, and they remained similar in their phenotype.
And then something really strange happened 150 years ago. We invented breed, and this is a new paradigm. It hadn't existed before, and breed changed from a type of dog with a function, so a retriever could have been a small dog, a large dog, it could be long-haired, short-haired, so long as it retrieved, it was a retriever.
And then suddenly breed existed. We, we, took the rainbow, the variety of dogs we had created, and we changed them into specific colours, so specific breeds. And, and those breeds became fixed.
We, we designed breed standards to describe them, and we started showing them. There was lots of money in this prestige, glory. There's a beautiful book written on this if you're interested in it.
And I think that in itself would make a wonderful film. So these breeds have a huge variety, 222 Kennel Club breeds, Vett Compass says 801 breeds, far more than the ones that are recognised by the Kennel Club. And they vary wildly from French bulldogs, who's the number one breed in dogs, aged under 1 year in the UK in 2019, Labrador Retrievers, kind of much more typical type dog.
And, and we went in 150 years from, a species that took 10 million years to evolve and we pulled it apart and stretched it in every way. So maybe some of the issues with these dogs are with dogs and why they get more research is their health. So, life expectancy can tell us a story about health.
The longer the dogs live, on average, the healthier they are. So this is a paper we published last year and it reported that dogs overall lived 11.2 years.
But when We looked across those common breeds, those 18 breeds, it varied widely, and this is huge evidence of, health issues, that's driven by breeding dogs. So 11.2 years, but when we look at, how long breeds live, we can see this ranges from 12.7 down to 4.5.
And when we look at the breeds, we can see typical breed type dogs that are not so extreme, and then we can see ones at the end here that are extreme, extreme brachycephalic breeds. Some of these living just 2/3 the length of the, the typical dogs. So maybe part of the reason for the, the research, bias in dogs is just that they need more help.
They have a lot more health issues than, cats do. And maybe over time we need to start changing our language and move away from thinking as cats as the underdog. Maybe we should invent a new word, maybe invent a word like the overcat and start to think of cats as the overcat and turn that into a good thing instead.
So with that, I'll leave you. Thank you very much for your attention. I'm delighted to take any questions, as is Maggie at the end as well and thank you very much.
Great, thank you, Dan. That was a little mini history lesson as well. Something I picked up on that you said in your talk, cats are not small dogs, which I think a lot of people tend to forget, and also that cats live next to humans, not with them, which is kind of echoed in a comment that we've got in the chat saying dogs have owners and cats have staff.
Yes. Absolutely, dogs come when you call and cats say leave a message and I'll get back to you. So, yeah, absolutely, yeah, they, they really are .
Very different. And, and the other thing is we often say cats are not small dogs and cats protection, but also they are not small humans in furry coats, cause sometimes people both with dogs and cats, a lot of owners increasingly are very, very anthropomorphic, and I think that can cause some really severe welfare issues, for both species. So, yeah, we certainly try and discourage some of the very anthropomorphic behaviour that we, we see.
The the comment about breed as well is, is from the researcher point of view really important when so obviously within vet compass we have these large data sets and when we do disorder studies and we're looking for risk factors for diseases. There is, there's one recurring risk factor in virtually every disease, and that's age, ages for some diseases, it's infectious diseases, it's often in younger animals, and then for most chronic diseases, it's older. In dogs, there's virtually no study I have ever done that breed is not a risk factor, for this, because the breeds vary so much.
In cats, breed is very rarely a risk factor. So, so that, that distinction is really key. Dog medicine, there's, there's, it's something I've been thinking about for a while is that in one sense, cats are a species, dogs are 801 species.
Each breed is now breeding with independently and so distinct to other breeds that really it should be considered almost as 801 species. Yeah, I mean, we've often said that if an alien came down and they looked at a chihuahua and a Great Dane, they wouldn't conceive that they could be the same species. And you would agree with them.
Yes. And you would think, gosh, why have people bred these weird things? Particularly a Chihuahua.
But, I'm not completely anti-dogs, but I do sometimes think we've done terrible things. Oh, my own black cat has just come in, and I'm just checking cause, oh, he's got, he's got, he's got a mouse. As if on cue.
Yes, yes. I'll just, yeah, OK, OK, let's move on to some questions because we've got a fair few in the in the Q&A box. So the first one that came in, I think.
Maggie, this is during your talk. They are, they're quite surprised to know that cats are considered less important than dogs since they come from Japan, where people have more cats than dogs. Is this a trend seen only in the UK or the whole of Western countries, do you think?
I think it's, . I would say it's definitely a European and probably an American thing. I think it is changing, but certainly when you see, you know, if you go to places like the Southern Mediterranean where there's quite a lot of feral cats, there's definitely sort of often less interest in doing something about them, but there are.
I suppose other factors, you know, places where they have a lot of street dogs, once they start getting the street dog populations under control, then the cat numbers rise. So, yeah, I think it's cultural, though. I think definitely, and I, I mean, I can't really speak for Japan, but I think often there's sort of smaller houses and things like that, so, and very dense populations in the cities, which is probably one of the factors.
But, . Yeah, it's, it's definitely more cultural in in Europe, I would, I would say. OK, and another kind of more specific question for you, Maggie, and you mentioned in your presentation.
That, well, they're not sure. Should you not withhold food for more than 3 hours before neutering in the UK in the US? Yeah.
That was, that was specifically talking about very young kittens. So if you're thinking about neutering, I mean, the under 4 months, particularly if you're thinking about 8 or 12 week old kittens, because they will, get a drop in blood glucose much more rapidly. And that obviously, will, Increase the risk with the procedure.
So we generally would only starve them for about 3 hours and then feed them as soon as they're awake. I mean, with the combination, we tend to use, we use the quad, that has midazolam in, so they're usually really hungry when they wake up. So they'll, we feed them straight away.
But yeah, with adult cats, we would, we would starve them for, for longer, but it's for the teeny tiny ones, just so that they don't get hyperglycemic. Another, another question, kind of in the in the, the neutering vein, . Early cat neutering before the completion of primary vaccination.
Is that what's done? Are there any recommended recommended precautions, especially at high volume urban and shelter clinics? Yeah, I mean, and I think you have to look at the context and, and the individual cats.
For us at cats protection, what we try and do is we will usually give the cats, the kittens their first vaccination and then use them a week later. We obviously want to get them into their new homes as quickly as possible because the biggest risk to them as regards infectious disease is being in a shelter, where obviously there's an awful lot more infections. So we'll usually give them their first shot a week later, we'll neuter them, we'll get them into their home, and then they'll get the, the new owner will get the second vaccination done.
Obviously, in a lot of really, you know, big, high volume, neuting clinics, they will neuter anything, particularly if, if, if they're ferals had been trapped, anything that you can trap, you, you neuter. And certainly, I've done neutering abroad, where we did 6 week old kittens, and, but they were ferals that were. Being put back out.
But, but for some owned cats, you know, perhaps 4 months rather than doing them at, at, at, you know, 9 weeks is probably more appropriate and then they may have had their full course, which is probably ideal, but it does depend on the circumstances. And for us, definitely getting them out there into their new homes, but already neuted is really important. So, yeah, you need to just think of the individual sort of circumstances, really.
Great, thank you. So I'm just I'm conscious of time. I'm going to and I know I've got all of Maggie's questions first, so I'm gonna move down to some of questions to Dan's talk, all of these questions, they will be kind of noted and answered, so when the the recording of this goes out, I think the answers to the questions will be there as well.
Let's see, so. Could I, could I do, there's a very quick one, hit by car. Would that be OK, Alexandria?
Yes, go ahead. Yeah, I'm just looking at it because this one comes up all the time. It's a really good question from, maybe we're not meant to say the names on here, are we?
There's a really good question about, I had made a comment. I'm assuming this was related to the comment that virtually every vet compass study I've done on risk factors for dogs has breed in it. And somebody has questioned whether hit by a car.
Surely that's just random. And they've said, well, maybe there's some breed associated owner behaviour. Well, we have done that study.
I've put the link to the paper into the chat. I was on the part of a master's student with Caitlin Boyd, and breed was a risk factor. Part of it might be, owners, but part of It is the dogs themselves, and some breeds have different recall to other breeds.
Part of it is that certain types of dogs are, are just carried under your arm or they're never left off the lead for certain reasons, or they're, they're, they're never taken out. Some people get cer certain breeds again, often the brachycephalic ones because they don't need exercise. That's not quite the same as perhaps the reality that they're not capable of.
Taking exercise. But, it means that there, there are huge breed differences. And it also goes back to the fact that people talk about genetic disease and non-genetic disease, and, and really that's not a safe thing to say because breed is determined by your genetics.
And if I have just said that breed is a risk factor for virtually everything, including hit by a car. Then every disease in dogs has a genetic component that's different in cats. And the, the link on to that, there was a question just earlier, in dogs, do, do you think it's realistic or favourable for dogs to move away from breeds?
It's almost two answers to that. There's, there's almost. That what should happen and what will happen.
It's the normative and the ideal, right? So we might argue that for some of the extreme breeds, we definitely need to move away from extreme in those breeds. We need French bulldogs to have noses and spines that can bend and tails, and that's where we are hoping the breeds will go.
The reality is, even if you got rid of all the breeds and dogs today, they would be back again tomorrow. We're already inventing new breeds, Labradoodles. The second, the second, we've got cockapoos, kappos, Labradooons, etc.
The second most common dog in the UK in 2019 aged under one, a new puppy, was the cockapoo. The most common was a French bulldog and the Labrador was #3. So that means we're already inventing new breeds and it's human nature.
It, it doesn't matter. Even if we got rid of every car tomorrow, we would invent variation, how we see the world be categorised. So it's a really good question.
What really should be happening is we, we, we should accept there are breeds and breeds bring so many benefits in terms of. We know about these dogs will grow up to be size wise and maybe temperament wise, but what we do need to do is move away from the ones where we have strong evidence that they're associated with serious and common health issues, and, and there are several of those breeds, and we need to move them to a healthier state. I thought Maggie, if you wanted to add to that.
Yeah, I mean, and just with cats. I mean, I, I personally find it quite sad, but Now there are increasing numbers of pedigree cats because cats were perfect as they were. We didn't need to really, change them.
And unfortunately, there are some things that are happening, often starting in the States, sadly, is where we are getting more extreme. Something like the Munchkin, which is, a short-legged cat, obviously using the dwarfism. Gene in that one.
And that cat, gets spinal problems. It gets all the problems that dexies get. And to me, that's a really sad thing.
And things like the Scottish fold, where obviously, it's a, it's a, a cartilage, deformation, and that means all their joints are affected and they're very prone to arthritis. And we shouldn't be doing things that are leading to the cats having a less healthy life and less able to beat proper cats in terms of being agile and all these sort of things. And things like hairless cats, you know, where, they're still programmed to, to groom because that's what cats do in the end that they.
You know, skin sore and things like that. So I think we've really got to think about what is in the welfare interests of these animals, rather than, I want something that looks a bit weird. But, I mean, Dan's right, people always want something different, but I think we need To try and get across to, to people that it's not always great welfare.
And obviously the other thing that really concerns me with cats is the hybridization. Obviously, the Bengal is, is so much of a breed now, I don't think that will ever stop, but some of the other hybrids, there's some serious, serious welfare issues, not only for the cats, but. You know, often they, when they do the first crosses something like, a savannah, which is a serbal cross, you know, the male server will often kill the queen, the domestic queen, in the first, attempted mating and things like that.
So, I think there are some things we really need to have a long, hard look at and be trying to avoid some of the, the extremes that we've seen in in dogs appearing in cats, but we, we're now getting ultra Persians, you know, where their, their noses between their eyes and all these hideous things, and you just think. You know, we're not really doing what's what's in the Welsh welfare interests of these animals. There are a couple of questions also relating to a damaging anthropomorphisms.
What are the damaging ones and it, . Are there any specific anthropomorphic things people say about or do with the cats that you feel are particularly a problem or particularly damaging? Yeah, I mean, and, and we have to be honest that sometimes anthropomorphism can be useful.
For example, with something like pain relief, because if you think, oh, when I, when I've had an operation, I was sore, so it's quite good if my, my pet gets some, some pain relief. That's useful. But I think things like dressing them up, I mean, you see so many pictures online, both dogs and cats, you know, oh, it's Halloween, let's dress them up as a pumpkin.
Well, for cats, that's really restricting and very, very stressful. So, you know, that's it. But also this idea of treating them as if they're human children and using, even using terms like pet parent or fur babies.
And then it's not really encouraging people to think about what are the species needs of, of their pets and not to think of them, as they truly are and their true nature. So, but, and even there are things like, you know, putting nail varnish on them, you know, both cats and dogs, you know, and all sorts of things that you just think, why, so. But, but, you know, there's a lot more in the way of clothes available for cats and dogs now than they used to be.
And, and even some of the dietary things, you know, I see things where it says natural food, and it's got a picture of peas and carrots on, and you're like, that's not natural food for a cat. But apparently someone did once try to make tinned rodents, but as humans didn't like that. So, but.
I can still hear my cat's still running around. Rabbit. I was just gonna say there was a couple of people asking for papers.
I've just put links onto the, comas site where we have, a library of all the papers, all the papers are open access, so there's links there to them. Virtually every paper comes with an infographic as well. So that's, a kind of some.
It's like the cartoony version of the paper on a single, picture. It's very good for social media, but it's the sort of thing that people often use in their vet practises or in their social media from your veterinary practises or wherever. It's quite useful for disseminating.
So a couple of people had asked them to chat, so I just pop these in, including a paper on longevity in cats. Yeah, sorry, Alexandria. That's all right.
That's right. There was also a question about the, the book that you mentioned, in the slide before your 100 dogs, the title of that book. Yeah, so I've popped that into that as well.
OK, great. So how do we encourage owners to provide mental enrichment for their cats, including training games, climbing trees, etc. Yeah, well, obviously, I think it depends a bit on whether it's an indoor cat or an indoor outdoor cat.
And I think, I think we have to go back and again think about how cats would behave in the wild. And obviously cats, tend to be the sort of stalk and, and pounce and kill sort of hunters. And they, so it's a very sort of brief, sort of chase.
It's not like dogs that will be sustained followers. And you know, with dogs, you can throw a ball a million times and they still keep coming back with it. Whereas cats get bored.
With with things very quickly. So you want to have quite a variety of different things and just play with them briefly, but multiple times they need sort of lots of short, multiple actions. Cause obviously, they do 40 hunting expeditions every day.
Not all of them are successful. So things like, and, and toys, and things that mimic. Pray, so things that do have sort of furry or feathery textures, obviously movement, so, you know, we like the sort of fishing rod type toys, because that really gets their interest.
I know a lot of people will use things like laser pointers, but we're. A little bit concerned about those, because often it can lead to frustration in the cats because they'll do the chasing bit, but they never get to do the actual kill part. So with any toy, you should let the cat do the sort of kill action.
So you should usually then give them a toy if you're playing with a laser pointer for a bit. But also, food puzzles are really good. Things like the feeding balls, where you can put dry food in and the cat rolls them around and gets the food, or even scrunch up bits of newspaper.
Or make little things with toilet rolls where you can hide bits of food in there. So they have to seek and, and just seek them out a little bit more. But, but lots of brief episodes are, are on the best way forward and lots of variety and changing the toys.
And obviously, in terms of, you know, they, they have that necessity to hide and get up high with that whole prey species action. So make sure the cats have plenty of Places to hide and places where they can get up high. Because there is, there are papers that show that their stress is reduced by having the ability to hide.
So that's incredibly important as well. But yeah, if they're an indoor cat, you need to give them lots of different opportunities. And, and you can get some great things now, you know, quite complex toys and puzzles for them.
And also you can get like the wheels, where if you've got a very active cat, they They can just run on the wheel and, you know, they're quite good for things like Bengals if you've got an indoor Bengal where they could just run and run and run. So, yeah, things that are going to really let them express their hunting behaviour cause they do get endorphin release from the hunt. They do actually get pleasure for the hunting cause they're not driven by hunger.
They're driven by the fact that it's pleasurable. Cause if they waited until they were hungry, they wouldn't get enough prey every So junkies. So they are, they actually need, and they really need that.
So they need to mimic that hunting behaviour. So that's why it's important, but, but that's sort of seeking out or, or the, the play is, is related to, to hunting, and that's why they, they love it so much. So it's little and often with cats, little and often and variety.
OK. Another question, So the the person who posted the question seems to remember that the cat to human ratio in the UK, overtaking the dog to human ratio. Does this mean that we're caring for our cats better than dogs?
Would you say? Do you have any opinions on that? Or do you, do you know if that ratio is correct?
Now, I, I know from, from some of, well, our own studies, but also the poor report. I mean, now we reckon there's about 11 million owned cats in the UK. And we have recently published a figure for the urban unknowned population, which is about quarter of a million in the UK, .
And the dog figure, I think is, I mean, there's different studies, but sort of what, about 10 million, 8 to 10 million dogs. . So, I don't know.
The figures are fairly similar, but, and I would say both over the pandemic, the number of, both dogs and cats that people were owning increased. I think there's issues at the moment because there are more kittens being born because during the pandemic, fewer cats were neutered. So we are seeing more kittens.
But I don't know, Dan, you might have more accurate figures at your fingertips. The realities came up again. At the weekend in Ireland, because they're, they're just a whole raft of new rules on breeds and what types can be bred from.
The reality is we actually don't know. Those are all estimates exactly as you say, Maggie, there's different papers and the, the poll reports very good. The manufacturers do their studies, universities have done them.
They've been based on Kennel Club records, based on veterinary records, based on microchip data. And it really is that, some of those data sets, collect data on animals, certainly dogs that are born, dogs entering, but is often that slide I put up, the different breeds live dramatically different lengths of time. So trying to extrapolate from the number of puppies entering the world to the number of dogs that still remain a few years later is very complex.
The kind of heuristic or rule of thumb, all, well, when I first left veterinary practise in 2009, it was around 8 million was the rule of thumb. Now it's around 10. And for cats maybe just a little bit above that.
So yeah, so, so, but the rule of thumb is roughly the same, but the reality is, along with so like when I was in veterinary practise and in a new graduate, you thought. Everybody knew the answer to all these questions. It's just I haven't yet learned what the answer is.
As the years go by, you realise on the really big questions, we actually don't have the answers and actually quite scary, the level of lack of knowledge, lack of awareness that we. So yeah, so roughly, roughly 10 to 11 million, give or take a few million. And I think often it's not so much perhaps that cats are getting better care, but just perhaps it's about the practicalities of it for many people with their lifestyles and their homes and .
And, Yeah, the pandemic, but obviously, yeah, a lot of, a lot of people got got dogs during the pandemic, which has not always worked out terribly well. Right. And, and, and certainly with, well, less so with cats maybe because the majority are cats, but with dogs, we talk about the level of care.
Really, is it the level of care the animal needs or the level of care that a dog should need. In other words, some breeds need they're a special breed and they need a special owner because you can't take them out on a hot day because the drugs can't take the heat or whatever. So in other words, often they need more care, but that's because they're an extreme in the first place.
So, even, even if we're using the level of care we give as a measure of which we love these animals, you could flip that and say the level of care is a measure of how much maybe we have harmed them by extreme. Oh yes, absolutely, and certainly something like a, a long-haired cat like a Persian takes a lot more work than a, a short-haired moggy and, and we've not necessarily done them a great. Favour with that, so yeah, but yet you could argue you're giving that Persian more care, but the reality is, maybe we could have read it such that it didn't mean absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. OK, I think because I am conscious of time, I think we'll have one more short question, or maybe it's not short, maybe this will turn into a big discussion, but, we'll, we'll answer this question and then we'll take note of all the other questions answered and answer them separately. So, I guess this was asked during your talk, Dan.
Do you think we could somehow make behavioural research for cats in their home? I mean, is that done? Now, logistically, I would think that'd be a bit difficult.
I'm not sure how you approach. Behaviorally. Cat research.
Yeah, and Maggie will be able to answer probably more of the cats on this, but increasingly, behaviour, if we're looking for natural behaviour, it probably is better off done in. The the home environment, we can't say it's natural as in wild, but that, that can be done by remote access can be done by owners keeping diaries. Yeah, it doesn't really require the researcher, you know, to, to bring their sleeping bag, a camp bed and a plastic tea and move in for a week and to look at the so.
So there are ways of doing it, such that it gives information that can then generalise to other cats in their homes as opposed to studying a cat in a veterinary surgery where the cat is just stressed and isn't behaving typically. Maggie, would you? Yeah, no, I would absolutely agree, and obviously the use of, of, of video, at home either, you know, if it's some very weird behaviour that, that, that is trying to be captured, the, you know, the owner can.
Can, can video that. But obviously, you can set up cameras just to sort of, you know, sort of CCTV type things, so that you can just watch the cats behaving, you know, perhaps when no one's around, and you often learn a lot through that. So, yeah, I would say, yeah, it's fine with modern.
Technology, you can actually get a much better idea of what's going on. And, and cats will behave much more naturally, obviously, in their home. And, and even physiologically, we know that, you know, by the time we've taken a cat to the vet, their blood glucose will be, will be higher, because of stress.
So, you know, increasingly, owners are doing things like blood glucose with cat cats at home, to try and, and help that. So, yeah, I think there's a lot that can be done at home. And even, even that, just a comment from Henrietta, she has given permission up above that I can say her name.
Some excellent comments from you, but your final one about observer independent, really important when it comes to cats, because even after the study I was showing you is that, humans aren't necessarily the safe haven for most cats, but a lot of dog research, research is deliberately involved in human or the owner. Yeah, or a stranger, so that, you are totally correct. The the remote access probably is very useful for.
Yeah, and, and, you know, and as you were saying, you know, for dogs, the safe haven is the person, but for cats, the safe haven is the territory. And that's why they've just been, you know, taking them out and about is, is not, is not great for them. OK, excellent questions there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm afraid, well, I think we're going to have to leave it at that for now. I'd like to thank again everyone who joined this webinar tonight and our speakers, Doctor Maggie Roberts and Doctor Dan O'Neill. Thank you very much.
Yeah, yeah, thank you, everyone. Thanks for your questions. Thanks everybody for attending and listening and Maggie and Alexandra for your help here as well.
Thanks. Bye, bye.
