The veterinary visit experience from the cat perspective, and how cat-friendly practice design improves welfare and health outcomes.
The veterinary visit is the most common context in which cat welfare and human health concerns collide: the cat needs examination and care, but the experience of getting there and being examined is sufficiently stressful to impair health monitoring and cause ongoing avoidance of needed care. Cat-friendly practice design, carrier training, pheromone use, and low-stress handling techniques are evidence-based interventions that transform the veterinary visit from a traumatic event to a manageable one. The welfare case for investing in these approaches is clear — cats who receive regular veterinary care live longer and healthier lives, and reducing the barriers to that care is a welfare imperative.