Communicating with Cats CPD with Hannah R

The talk was hosted by the wonderful Nikki McLeod, a registered veterinary nurse and the creator of Feline Fabulous Veterinary Nursing, and she has an absolute wealth of knowledge when it comes to behaviour and especially in promoting feline friendly practice. 

She took us through “Nikki’s Top Ten Kitty Tips” in which she had made a show of what is best for our feline patients and how to best accommodate our practice to suit them. Some things seemed so simple once you knew about them, but could really make all the difference to how a consult would go.

Nikki spoke highly about feliway and using that as much as you can in practice to help cats be nice, calm and settled while coming in - using it on blankets in consults, having it plugged into walls in the waiting room and then also using it on your clothes so that if you have to handle the cats you already smell like everywhere else and can keep them de-stressed.

There was also a video shown about cats travelling into the vets and how depending on how you get the cat in, it can cause “trigger stacking” which by the time the cat gets to the vets, they’re already on edge and just don’t want to be there at all. It was taken from the perspective of being in the cat carrier so you could really see how the noises and the angles could affect them.

There was a lot of great information presented on the night on how we can work to make life as stress-free as possible for our feline patients in practice. It felt like this talk came at just the right time as we’re about to officially open our cat clinic in Linlithgow - so we’ll happily take in all the tips and tricks for making it the best that it can be for our clients and patients. The biggest take away from the night was that “All cats are individuals.”