Being friendly to cats… is it worth the effort?

The adage “a cat is not a small dog” is as true as ever, and many veterinary clinics seem to be geared more towards treating dogs than cats. Pere Mercader reviews recent research that looked at how being a “Cat Friendly Clinic" can be good for business.

Pere Mercader
DVM, MBA
 

Introduction

Cats have a unique nature and certain specific needs, which can make visits to a veterinary practice stressful for them, for their owners and for the veterinarians. This can potentially generate a vicious circle in which because cats are stressed when they visit the clinic, their owners tend to avoid or postpone these visits, resulting in veterinarians seeing cats less frequently than dogs and, as a consequence, becoming less used to handling them properly (Figure 1).

To address this issue, the International Society of Feline Medicine (1) designed a program — the Cat Friendly Clinic, or CFC (2) — to help veterinarians create a more pleasant experience for their feline patients and clients. The program includes information and support materials to help the interested clinics achieve a higher standard of cat care and to obtain the corresponding accreditation.

Royal Canin recently asked VMS¹ (Veterinary Management Studies) to perform a research project with the goal of answering the question: are Cat Friendly Clinics able to generate a stronger bonding with their feline clients when compared to “standard” clinics? A summary of the research methodology, the key findings and the main insights that were obtained are set out below.

¹ www.estudiosveterinarios.com
 

Research methodology

VMS analyzed all the economic transactions of 8,490 feline patients from a sample of 29 accredited Spanish “Cat Friendly Clinics” between 2015 and 2017. These were compared to the economic transactions of 123,674 feline patients from a second sample of 537 Spanish practices that were not accredited as Cat Friendly, across the same period. Statistical checks were performed to validate that both sample groups had a comparable geographic and size distribution to avoid these factors confounding the research results. In Spain there are currently 94 Cat Friendly Clinics, within an overall total of 5,350 veterinary centers. The key findings are best represented in graphic format, as shown. [...]