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press release
Cat Friendly Practice awards speech - November 9, Electric Cinema Claire Bessant, FAB Chief Executive When we started Cat Friendly Practice and launched it at BSAVA in 2006 we could only have dreamed that it would catch everyone’s imagination as it has. We wanted to raise awareness of the cat within practice and to recognise and reward practices for providing feline-friendly care through our awards scheme. Obviously the time was ripe for the idea. It all started with our feline expert panel – a group of people who either are or have been funded by FAB through lectureships or residencies at veterinary schools. There are also two nurses – vital to a successful care regimen. Specialising in cats, they have all developed ways of working with these potentially rather dangerous animals which allow them to handle them. Indeed cats which have been referred to the universities are, almost by definition, going to be difficult to diagnose and treat and usually have to undergo a wide range of tests and examinations. So we began to figure out just what it was that they were doing differently, from handling, to housing, to medication –to expose the secrets of the cat specialists. Initially I thought we would end up with five points on a sheet – two booklets later and we are still adding to our knowledge – and the practices here have all come up with their own ideas which we can learn from too. Once you start ‘thinking cat’ all sorts of things fall into place. Indeed, Cat friendly practice is now not confined to the UK. One of our sponsors, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, has worked with FAB’s Feline Veterinary Federation - groups of feline vets coming together under the FVF banner - and the first booklet is now available in Spanish and French and, soon, Dutch. Once again practices were nominated by clients who responded to a practice poster and nomination forms or to articles in the FAB Journal, Your Cat magazine or Veterinary Times, our media partners. We thank them and our sponsors Hill’s, Pfizer and Direct Line for their continued support that has allowed us to build on this campaign. We learned a lot during 2006 and so this year were able to be more specific about what we were interested in seeing– to the extent that the quality of presentations was amazingly high. In a few moments I will hand over to Andrea Harvey, our FAB lecturer in Feline Medicine at Bristol vet school, who will talk a little bit more about the judging – suffice to say, there were lots of excellent practices and it wasn’t easy! But what a great problem to have! We asked this year’s and last year’s winners how cat friendly practice had affected their practice, clients and, of course, the cats. Here are some edited highlights – full quotes are in the press packs. This has been a fabulous campaign for the Feline Advisory Bureau. Cats do mean business for practices and many clients expect the highest quality of cat care. We hope that it is a win win situation for everyone – happier owners, healthier cats and less stress in the surgery. As Carole Clarke, one of last year’s gold winners from Mill House Veterinary Surgery and Hospital put it - ‘the best thing about being a cat friendly practice is the opportunity to enjoy working with our feline patients and taking that bit of extra time and trouble to make cats feel at home in the practice – it rubs off on us too’
Andrea Harvey’s presentation The Awards Seven bronze awards will be presented by Libby Sheridan from Hill’s. Cynthias
Easy to give awards In 2005 we introduced our Easy to Give awards to recognise companies making products which improved the compliance of medicine-taking among cat owners – ie products which recognised the difficulty of medicating cats. Whether manufacturers provide drugs in a highly palatable form or introduce a new mode of administration, FAB welcomes their recognition of the problems of giving medicines to cats and providing solutions for owners. Proper compliance with the prescribed dose is vital for safe and effective use of drugs. Without such help owners often fail to complete the course and leave cats inadequately treated – not to mention the angst, stress and even injury, if not to person, then to relationship, that some pill giving can bring. That’s the end of our formal ceremony – congratulations to everyone for improving the lot of cats. FAB is 50 next year and we will be celebrating our golden anniversary with some new thinking on cat care. I leave you with a picture of the beautiful rose named after the charity ‘Fab at 50’.
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