Description
BVA webinar in association with Mars Petcare.
Why are cats always considered the underdog, especially with regard to how much they are understood and valued by human society? Their mysterious nature has led to them being worship as gods but also vilified and persecuted as the companions of witches.
We can start to answer this question by looking back many thousands of years as cats and dogs have evolved very differently. Whereas dogs are an obligate social species having evolved from wolves and other wild dogs who lived in packs of related family members, domestic cats evolved from a small solitary predator, the African Wild Cat, which is also a prey species.
Humans selectively bred dogs to perform a wide variety of functions such as hunting, herding and guarding. Cats were not selectively bred (until the last 200 years) but spontaneously moved into human territories once they started farming grain and thus had large numbers of rodents around their settlements which the cats helped to control. This meant that dogs were valued more in human society and were perceived to have a stronger bond due to their social behaviour whereas cats were seen as much less social and less financially valuable. Dogs have developed complex facial muscles that other dogs can interpret and they can also read the facial expressions of humans. Cats have had no reason to do this and so seem more distant and independent and are not very well-understood by people, leading to their welfare needs often not being met.
Being a prey species, totally dependent on themselves, cats cannot afford 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 analgesia.
There are many more laws in the UK relating to dogs than cats which may be seen ambivalently. Dogs are more likely to injure people through bites or causing accidents and so owners have an obligation to control them in a way that is not expected of cat owners. This freedom can be advantageous, but it does mean that when laws are proposed to protect dogs, governments often don’t see the need for cats to be given the same protection. Currently there is no licensing of cat breeding and microchipping is still not compulsory despite manifesto pledge of the government.
One area where cats are probably not the underdog is neutering and population control in the UK. There are marked differences in reproduction, size and physiology that mean that surgical neutering, including pre-pubertal neutering, is quicker, cheaper and more consistent in outcome that in dogs.
This session is designed to challenge people’s preconceptions about cats and gives 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 misunderstood and mysterious species.
