5 Jul 2022
As the profession grapples with a growing recruitment and retention crisis, and vet teams are increasingly stretched, neutering appointments are proving more difficult for owners to book.
Paul Imrie
Job Title
Cat owners are struggling to book routine neutering appointments due to the increasing workforce pressures affecting post-pandemic practices.
Welfare charities had feared the onset of COVID-19 would lead to an explosion in the number of unwanted litters, but collaborative efforts by them and the veterinary profession ensured this did not come to pass.
However, as the profession grapples with a growing recruitment and retention crisis, and vet teams are increasingly stretched, neutering appointments are proving harder for owners to come by.
Speaking in the question and answer section in the “Why are cats always the underdog?” session at BVA Live, Caroline Allen, CVO for the RSPCA, praised the work of Cat-Kind – a collaboration of charities promoting prepubertal neutering at four months instead of the traditional six – and the strides of charities in neutering up to 200,000 cats a year.
But Dr Allen said her charity was increasingly hearing from owners struggling to get neutering appointments with vets for their new cats.
She said: “I think there have been real leaps and bounds in terms of neutering; the Cat-Kind programme is excellent and it is a really good collaboration between different charities.
“It is interesting, talking to vets. I think there is still very much this habit around the six months neutering.
“I feel we are breaking it down, but I am a little bit worried about how we might step backwards.
“During the pandemic, we all worked very closely together to flag the difficulties of getting pets neutered, and worked with the profession and put out a lot of messaging around that, and we didn’t see what we were worried about, which was a mass of kittens.”
Dr Allen added: “But we are starting to find now people are struggling to get their cats neutered.
“The profession is under an incredible stress, and we are very mindful of that and aware, but something we have started to talk about, and we want to talk about with the profession, is what can we do to make sure we can maintain pet neutering.
“How can we support the profession; are there innovative things that you can do: weekend sessions in clinics, trying to get people back who have diversified – I don’t know.
“But we are feeling it across our branch sector, the national society – owners are contacting us that they can’t get their cats in. We know how quickly cats can breed, and with the cost of living crisis coming as well, I just think it is a little bit of a risky time.”
Replying to the points, feline vet specialist Sarah Caney, who spoke in the session, said: “I think it is very worrying to hear what you have just said, and you are obviously much more in touch with that situation than I, so it does really worry me that you are flagging this.
“There is obviously a huge strain on the veterinary profession in general, a lot of retention and recruitment problems, and I can see how, for the clinics as well, if they are running neutering as a not-profitable part of their business, that might be having an impact on decisions they need to make.”
BVA president Justine Shotton, chairing the session, said the information was “something we need to be critically aware of”.
Earlier in the session, which concluded day one of the inaugural BVA Live in Birmingham, International Cat Care chief executive Claire Bessant outlined how society had historically prioritised dogs over cats, and said cats were still not well understood.
Madison Rogers, acting head of advocacy and government relations for Cats Protection, said it was important health and welfare legislation, such as compulsory microchipping, was brought in across UK nations for cats as well as dogs.
She said she feared the growing trend, which spiked in the pandemic, of owners buying cats online was “here to stay”, while she was also worried more members of the public were seeking out unusual cat breeds, as they had done previously with dogs.
She said: “There has been a rise in the number of breeds that are popular for cats, which is a worrying trend, as we have seen this in the dog market.
“Lots of people now want very pretty, pedigree breeds, but what we found really interesting in the research we did was that it wasn’t people wanting a pedigree cat with all the lineage, people wanted a cat that looks a certain way, and they are not as bothered about whether it has got the paperwork as maybe we see in the dog market.”
The session also earlier covered the health problems in cats highlighted in the latest BVA Voice of the Veterinary Profession survey, including obesity, behaviour issues – particularly in multi–cat households – and dental disease.
Survey responses also highlighted welfare needs were often not being met in the housing of cats; of protection from pain, suffering, injury and disease; and in allowing them to exhibit normal behaviour.
Dr Caney said many cat owners still found visits to some practices stressful, but she added it was not always necessary for cats to be physically present at every appointment.
She said: “They don’t always have to bring their animal with them to seek advice and support – I am not saying we give our advice and support without charging, but we actually can do consultations without the presence of an animal, and that can be very effective.”
