Cat Friendly Practice®
Because we care about reducing stress and making visits easier for cats and caregivers, our entire staff has undergone training and we’ve modified our facility to earn gold-level certification as a Cat Friendly Practice®.
We take extra steps to provide the best care and experience for you and your cat with gentle and respectful feline-friendly handling.
We do everything we can to keep your cat from seeing or smelling other animals, and we’ll help you manage the stress of traveling to and from our practice.
We focus on pain management, nutrition, and best practices for the home environment, and our recommendations are individualized to each cat based on age, lifestyle, and health concerns.
We follow the vaccination guidelines of the AAFP Feline Vaccine Advisory Panel to avoid vaccine-site sarcomas.
Our goal is to help meet the needs of your cat during their visit with us, and to help you know how to best meet their needs at home based on the five pillars of a healthy feline environment:
- Safe Place
- Every cat needs a safe and secure place where she can retreat to and feel protected or that can be used as a resting area.
- Multiple and Separated Key Resources
- Key resources include food, water, toileting areas, scratching areas, play areas, and resting or sleeping areas.
- Opportunity for Play and Predatory Behavior
- Play and predatory behaviors allow cats to fulfill their natural need to hunt.
- Positive, Consistent, and Predictable Human–Cat Social Interaction
- Cats’ individual preferences determine how much they like human interactions such as petting, grooming, being played with or talked to, being picked up, and sitting or lying on a person’s lap.
- An Environment That Respects the Importance of a Cat’s Sense of Smell
- Some smells can be threatening to cats (i.e., unfamiliar animals, or scented products or cleaners) which may lead to problematic behaviors such as urinating outside of the litter box or scratching in undesirable areas.
