Remember back in school when they taught us cats were not small dogs? The thrust of the argument was we should treat cats as the completely distinct biological organisms they are. In practice, however, the bulk of the vet industry never took that contention to its logical conclusion. Instead, most of us toil in facilities designed primarily for dogs for businesses relying on canine-sourced capital more than ever before.
Why? Because conventional wisdom says cats do not pay like dogs do. But is that true? Is it right? Is it fair? What should we do about it?
Phase 3 of the behemoth Bayer Veterinary Care Usage Study was designed with this last question in mind. It outlined why cat owners were less likely to seek care or spend as much as their canine counterparts. Here’s a quick summary of its initial findings:
• Humans perceive cats as independent and largely self-reliant creatures. We, therefore, assume cats do not require routine care as often as dogs do.
• The fact cats are more likely to be informally acquired lends to the prevalence of a correspondingly informal relationship with
their care (let alone their financial requirements).
• Cats hide illness so masterfully owners are less likely to bring them to the veterinarian unless very sick and, when they do, tend to balk at electing appropriate care due to an underestimation of its severity.
• Cats are less easily fooled and generally less tractable than dogs. Vet visits are clearly a stressor for both cat and man—one they believe best avoided, if possible.
Sure, we all know these things—intuitively, anyway—even if we had not had them handed to us on a platter via a study our American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) dollars partially commissioned. However, this is only part of the story. After all, this is not all on cat owners.
Offering fair care
As much as they may vex, provoke, and dismay us at times, most modern cat owners are fairly consistent in wanting what is best for their cats. When it comes right down to it, it is our job to make sure cat owners understand the basics of feline healthcare. Unfortunately, that is a platform I believe we have long since abdicated (if ever we claimed it) in our almighty hunt for the low-hanging fruit that is the dog-dedicated dollar.
Now, some of the truisms we attribute to cat owners are not always afield of the mark. Sure, they can be fussy, intense, even downright weird at times, but what we really object to is the money thing. In addition to the Bayer study findings, it is also true many feline keepers decline care for their sick or injured cat precisely because they keep a barrel full and don’t even budget for one.
Trust me, I get it. It is enough to make you want to stab them with their own cats’ claws, but it is not our job to judge these perceived felonies of feline care. It is our role to doggedly offer the medicine we have learned—not to make assumptions based on how cats were treated 20 years ago, or because the last blocked cat you treated had to be euthanized for lack of funds.
It is challenging, to be sure, staying true to our mission. However, we need to work harder to counter the biases we have understandably internalized over the years spent toiling in the trenches across the exam room table from those who would deny their cats the care they deserve. If we don’t, we are no better than our worst cat client and we will never cultivate the kind of feline clientele we could rightfully claim if only we treated cats with canine-equivalent respect.
Where are we failing?
It is my belief we have indulged our biases for so long we have effectively become our own worst enemies in the battle to elevate our cat-owning clienteles. With that in mind, here’s how I believe we have wronged them:
• We assign unfortunate attributes to cats and cat owners, and we tend to enter exam rooms steeled for battle. It is no wonder cats tend to react the way they do when teams trash talk cats for being “nasty,” “mean,” and “the devil.”
• We fail to offer cats as broad a range of services as their canine counterparts. From smaller things such as microchipping and routine dental care, to advanced diagnostics and specialty consults, we typically fail to consistently present a comprehensive list of options.
• Even within our own practices we are inconsistent in our recommendations to cat owners (this goes for everything from vaccination and sterilization to diet and behavior recommendations). It is like we don’t care enough to devise internal protocols and policies for their care.
• We spend less time with cat owners, talking less about behavior and basic husbandry than performing the fundamentals we know they will not decline.
• We fail to speak our minds. We certainly will not go out on a limb to explain the many ways owners are probably stressing their cats out and making them sick; and God forbid we mention that forcing five cats to cohabitate is a powder keg of emotional distress and a predisposing factor for serious illness.
• We make few concessions to feline emotional comfort within our practices. Sure, we make some, but only a small percentage of practices are taking Fear Free as seriously as they might.
• Along those lines, we tend not to teach our clients how to relieve feline stress and appropriately transport their cats (when just one email a year would do the heavy lifting).
• Worst of all, I believe we collectively care less about the outcome of our feline patients’ care. The way I see it, we have come to accept the concept that cat owners just care less—and we just follow suit.
I’m sure I’ll be hearing from some of you who either assume I own a practice that hates on cats or believes I’m being annoyingly self-righteous in their defense. As I well know from both my trap-neuter-return (TNR) work and (so many!) past missteps in practice, there is no way to win when it comes to talking honestly about feline welfare. After all, when it comes to those who care enough to take a side, emotions tend to run high.
Likewise, when it comes to cats in veterinary medicine, the problem is never the cats; it is the people. Ultimately, our cats should not have to pay the price for human controversy, pride nor prejudice. Perhaps if we viewed cats a little more like independent customers—the “end user” of our services, if you will—we might manage to divorce ourselves from those pesky, interpersonal concerns that keep us from doing right by our cats. Which, if it is any incentive (and it should be!), helps us do right by our practices, too.
In fact, I would be willing to stake my own practice on the following notion: If we suddenly started offering our cats the same level of service we offer our dogs—spending the same time in the exam room, offering all cats a consistent level of care, providing instructions to owners as to exactly what’s expected of them before, during and after vet visits and procedures, and dishing out the inconvenient truths they rather ignore—we would all up our game enough to be in a position to complain a whole lot less about our cat clientele.
Patty Khuly, VMD, MBA, owns a small animal practice in Miami and is available at drpattykhuly.com. Columnists’ opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Veterinary Practice News.