UK vets are to improve their understanding of cat behavior in order to better serve their clients and their patients. This is a Royal Veterinary College (RVC) initiative in partnership with Ceva Santé Animale (a veterinary health company).
A new online resource to help veterinary students, practitioners and pet owners better understand, and deal with, the undesirable behaviour of cats is being launched by WikiVet.
Clients (the cat’s owner) have stated in a survey that UK veterinarians can do better when advising on feline behavior problems. Clients expect their vet to be knowledgeable about cat behavior. They seek advice.
Armed with better knowledge of cat behavior, vets will also be better qualified to distinguish between medical and behavioral problems and work with them holistically, as being linked, rather than as separate issues.
The online resource for UK veterinarians is on WikiVet. There are 5,000 pages on that site concerned with medical matters to which information is being added on feline behavior in the form of videos and words.
It does beg the question whether they need their own information because this site, amongst many others, is full of first class information about feline behavior. Also there is no substitute to being a cat guardian for many years as a way of thoroughly understand the ways of our feline friends.
The upside is that there is a recognition that UK vets need to up their game with respect to expertise on feline behavior.
There will forty new pages on feline behavior on WikiVet. Jon Bowen. the feline behaviorist at the Veterinary Behavior Service at the RVC, is providing his expertise.
This initiative is timely, for me, as I wrote recently on this issue: the need for vets anywhere, it need not be the UK, to be better at providing advice on cat behavior and so called cat behavior problems. This extra knowledge will not only please customers but save the lives of cats through superior diagnosis.
Thank you so much for posting this news. I’ve taken a look at some of the information on the web site and it’s interesting reading.
It can only be a positive move if vets are encouraged to learn more about cat behaviour. Some of the problems currently being treated with medication, may be better served with behavioural solutions. Hopefully it should also make them better at handling nervous cats in the clinic. I’ve seen for myself, how a calm, but confident vet can make the experience a lot less stressful for the cat themselves.
Good thoughts. I strongly favour vets being expert at cat behavior. I am sure it will improve cat welfare for all kinds of reasons. A important one is that a vet can rectify any misconceptions a cat owner may have about cat behavior and focus more on human behavior where most of the problems are.