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press release
FAB Cat Friendly Practice competition In April this year the Feline Advisory Bureau (FAB), a charity dedicated to making life better for cats, launched its Cat Friendly Practice Scheme. The aim was to raise awareness of the special needs of cats in veterinary practice and to provide information to help the 8-9 million cats (5 million cat owning households) in the UK. Through the scheme, FAB aims to help cats and practices alike achieve less stressful and more successful visits to the vet, care for cats and safe return home. The scheme was supported by three sponsors - Hill's Pet Nutrition, Direct Line and Pfizer Animal Health. Thanks to the sponsors, over 2000 veterinary practices in the UK received the FAB guide to ‘Creating a Cat Friendly Practice', together with a poster and nominations forms. FAB practice members and any nominated practices were also given leaflets for their clients on a number of topics such as: ‘Your cat is having an operation' and ‘Giving medicines to your cat'. The judging panel consisted of representatives from the three sponsoring companies, media partners Veterinary Times and Your Cat magazine, as well as FAB staff and, most importantly, a veterinary surgeon and a veterinary nurse from the FAB feline expert panel. Almost 200 nominations were received for over 80 practices. Practices were notified that they had been nominated and invited to make a presentation explaining what they were doing for cats within their practice. Judges produced a shortlist of practices based on the quality of the presentations provided. FAB lecturer at Bristol University , Andrea Harvey, and feline nurse Suzanne Rudd, visited practices over the space of a week in a pink convertible Micra generously provided by Nissan. ‘Judging proved to be very difficult,' said FAB Chief Executive Claire Bessant. ‘Some practices provided excellent and detailed information on how they were working with cats. Others had tantilising glimpses of excellence but didn't quite convince the judges that they should be visited. We would like to have seen more but only had a week on the road to do so. Next year we hope to be able to visit more practices.' FAB has been running continuing professional development courses for vets on feline health for almost 50 years. The charity supports residencies at veterinary universities, provides advice for veterinary surgeons in practice and offers health advice for cats to owners through its website www.fabcats.org
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