🦔 Hedgehog Awareness Week 🦔
This week is dedicated to all this Hedgehog! As Spring is well under way now we will see a lot more hedgehog out and about and the babies are also starting to pop up too!
Hedgehog awareness week this year is focusing on being vigilant when out gardening, particularly when using strimmers. We see a lot of injured hogs that are hidden away in long grass that end up with large wounds from the strimmer wires. Always remember to check grassy areas before starting up the strimmer!
They are a wonderful endangered species who need all the love and care we can provide for them!
Today is world asthma day - did you know Cats can get asthma?🐱
Below is a little video made by Tabbie, one of our nurses here at bognor of her very handsome cat Hamish who suffers with asthma. She has some great tips and tricks to help get your little fur babies used to using an inhaler and managing the respiratory issues.
Tabbie works in our Bognor branch and can help assist in any feline asthma questions or tutorials you might need.
I think we can all agree that Hamish is such a fluffy handsome chap 😍
Did you know that your pets can be right or left handed - or pawed in their case?
They will have a dominant paw, as beautifully demonstrated by lovely Lottie below who shows her dominant side to be her left side.
Cats even tend to show a pattern with most female cats being right-pawed and males left-pawed! With a huge variety of animals also demonstrating a dominant side such as Parrots, Walruses, Lizards and Frogs!
Feline Fact Friday!🐈
Have you ever seen two cats wrapping their tails together or rubbing up against one another? This happens with cats that have a positive relationship with each other, this is thought to happen because the pheromones produced in this area are linked to maintaining social cohesion.
Here is mum and son Tabby and Toby showing their affection for each other by smooching up to one another - aren’t they so cute?!🐱
🐾 Feline Fact Friday 🐾
🐱Puzzle Feeding🐱
🌟This is an ideal way for owners to feed their cats and an excellent way to keep longer stay inpatients entertained in hospital!
🐀Cats are natural born hunters and are programmed to have up to 10 + small meals a day! Outdoor cats who hunt consume multiple prey, each containing around 30kcal per meal so by feeding little and often can help to mimic this feeding pattern which is better tolerated.
🐈⬛Cats who are fed two larger meals a day quite often eat a small amount and leave the rest. They may come back to it later but this way of feeding quite often leads to food spoiling, especially if wet food is left down for long periods of time.
🤒In hospital, veterinary staff need to allow patients time to rest and recover, so feeding this way may not always benefit the patient but we always calculate their daily calorie requirements correctly.
😻Puzzle feeding as mentioned is a brilliant way to entertain cats by making feed time interactive. Cats have to work and problem solve to eat their food so in a way, mimics some natural hunting behaviours and allows for slower eating and consuming smaller amounts in each meal. This helps create positive emotions especially if they are confined to a kennel, or indoor cats with no outdoor access where boredom is likely if they have little in the way of resources.
🤯It is important to make puzzle feeders as easy as possible to begin with, starting with a less complicated feeder and ensuring it is full with food (not going over daily requirements) so the food can be reached easily. If these are made too difficult to begin with, this can put cats off of using them and can cause negative feelings of frustration.
🧩Puzzle feeders come in all shapes and sizes and some can be home made out of yoghurt pots, egg boxes, inner tubes of loo rolls, empty drink bottles etc. We have seen some really creative home made feeders!
Many can also be shop brought.
🐈T
