Cat The Vet

28/11/2025

Did you know that your dog is more likely to get into trouble eating raisin-based food than chocolate?

This is according to the latest Petplan UK claim figures for 2025 and with Christmas about to kick off, that is probably going to get worse not better!

They have already paid out nearly £2 million this year for pet poisonings, with nearly 50% more claims for grapes and raisins than chocolate!

If your pet does manage to pinch something they shouldn’t over the festive season, my top three tips are;

🐶 Don’t try to make them sick at home. This can be potentially very dangerous and will only cause a delay in getting them the help they need.

🐶 Get them to your vet as soon as you can, the less time things are in their system, the better

🐶 Take the packaging of what they have eaten with you if you have it, especially if it is chocolate,. Knowing the ingredient volumes is very helpful for us in determining how concerned we should be.

For more information and advice on how to help keep your pets happy and healthy this winter, head to https://www.petplan.co.uk/pet-insurance/pet-care-and-advice.html

27/11/2025

Wonderful News!

Last week the Animal Welfare (Import of Dogs, Cats and Ferrets) Bill passed it's final stage in the House of Lords and will become law just as soon as the King signs on the dotted line! Which hopefully should be before the end of the year.

This is fantastic for animal welfare in our country and I cannot wait to see it in action.

This Bill will;

✅ Stop the importation of any puppy or kitten under the age of 6 months
✅ Reduce the numbers of animals coming in under 'non-commercial' entry
✅ Stop the import of dogs with cropped ears and docked tails
✅ Stop any heavily pregnant dogs being travelled into the UK

We absolutely must halt the flow of imported puppy farmed puppies into the UK and gain back some control and organisation over the market for 'rescue' dogs.

We also need to take a strong stand over cruel mutilations, making it clear they are not acceptable and removing the smokescreen for those harming dogs here and getting away with it by pretending they are imported.

I appreciate the concerns of some people that this will restrict genuine pedigree animals coming in young and will prevent stray mutilated dogs being imported to new homes. However, if we leave any loopholes, they will be exploited and so I am in agreement with this Bill having no wriggle room.

Thank you very much to Danny Chambers MP and his team for working so hard on this and getting it to this stage!

You can read the details of this Bill here; https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3790

25/11/2025

Have any of these pages popped up on your feed recently doing sponsored posts for pet food? Because they are all over mine!

I clicked on one because I was interested to see who ‘The Cat Nutritionist’ was and since many more have appeared.

And they all have a few things in common; they have very low numbers of followers, there is almost no content on them beyond a few profile pictures and there is little to no information about the creator apparently running them.

But all are running a significant number of ads for pet food brands.

So, I don’t think these are real pages, I think they are being run by these companies to tap into the greater levels of trust we have in content creators over the brands themselves when it comes to advertising in the online space.

All of the ads are marked as such, the rules are being followed on that score, but I do think there are legitimate questions to be asked as to whether this is a moral and ethical way to market, although I can certainly see it is likely to be a pretty cheap and efficient one.

Personally, one of the benchmarks I use when it comes to choosing a diet for my own pets, and for the ones I will happily recommend to my clients, is how that brand conducts itself in the public space and how they market their products. So, these ones are off my list!

**And since I made this reel, another one popped up, with no followers at all, but plenty of ads were running. 😬

Let me know if you have seen them too!

23/11/2025

I went to a brilliant talk at this year's London Vet Show discussing misinformation in the pet food space and it inspired me to make this post!

When you are reading about pet diets online (and all the opinions that can surround them!), here are two things to always remember;

1) The plural of anecdote is not evidence

Sharing of stories is great but without proper study, we cannot draw strong conclusions from individual experiences.

and

2) Surveys are inherently biased and often tell us what people believe to be true, not what is necessarily happening.

Even if the numbers of the respondents are in the thousands!

That is not to say surveys can't be useful but we have to interpret their findings with caution and they have to be extremely expertly written to limit that bias as much as possible.

20/11/2025

If you feel that using shame and negativity to sell your pet food is acceptable, then, in my opinion, you deserve to make no sales at all.

How dare you play on the fears of the people you want to be customers, undermining trust in an entire industry in the process.

Adverts like this often say ‘the pet food sector is broken’.

It isn’t.

It is thriving, and full of people and companies with endless integrity with a true commitment to the health and welfare of the pets they nourish…

… but if it were to break, it would be in no small part because of companies who market in an awful, derogatory and misleading way.

**This advert is far from the only one like this but it is a classic, and recent, example of the genre**

19/11/2025

We have been using the HT Vista in our clinic since we opened 6 months ago and it has gone down brilliantly with our clients and our team.

The machine performs non-invasive scans of skin masses on dogs. It takes less than a minute to get the result and it gives a percentage likelihood of the lump being benign.

At our practice we are offering it as a nurse-led procedure, once the pet has been examined by a vet.

We have spread the word about the service mainly on our social media and every single time we have posted, clients have booked themselves in for check-ups and we have gained patients because of it.

We all know how common masses are on dogs and I think sometimes as vet professionals we can underestimate how much they concern pet owners, but without giving them a clear opportunity to come and actively discuss them with us, many do just watch and worry about them!

If you are headed to this year’s London Vet Show, the HT Vista team will be there on stand W53 ready to demonstrate the machine to you and I can highly recommend checking it out!

**For full disclosure, this is a paid partnership and I was very kindly gifted the HT Vista but we do genuinely love it!**

18/11/2025

Is Your Dog Innately Healthy?

🐶 Do they have a nose that is long enough for them to be able to breathe comfortably or is it squashed and shortened, meaning they struggle?

🐶 Do they have smooth skin or does it fold over on itself on their faces and body and get sore and sweaty?

🐶 Do they have a healthy back and spine that they can bend and flex freely or is it curved and abnormal, meaning they are at a high risk of serious spinal injuries?

🐶 Are their legs long and straight or are they short and twisted, predisposing them to mobility problems?

🐶 Are their eyes set comfortably in their heads with eyelids they can close and open normally or do those eyes bulge out or have drooping eyelids that mean they are vulnerable to many painful conditions?

🐶 Do they have a mouth large enough for all their teeth to be positioned correctly and fit together well? Or are their jaws misshapen and short meaning those teeth are squashed together and they struggle with an under or over-bite?

🐶 Do they have a long, healthy tail they can wag unimpeded? Or is it short and kinked?

🐶 Do they have merle coat colouring, making them genetically vulnerable to many different and debilitating health conditions?

Today a new health assessment tool for dogs has been launched that will answer the question; ‘Is this dog innately healthy?’ and we are asking all prospective dog owners and breeders to take the quiz and find out the answer before they purchase or breed from a dog.

Because our dogs have gone too far when it comes to extreme conformations and we are causing unnecessary and needless suffering.

We have to stop producing and buying dogs with inherent traits that mean they will struggle and this is a simple and quick way to ensure that you are not doing that.

Please take the test and share the word!

👇🏻🙌🏻👇🏻

https://www.innatehealthassessment.org/

18/11/2025

Is Your Dog Innately Healthy?

🐶 Do they have a nose that is long enough for them to be able to breathe comfortably or is it squashed and shortened, meaning they struggle?

🐶 Do they have smooth skin or does it fold over on itself on their faces and body and get sore and sweaty?

🐶 Do they have a healthy back and spine that they can bend and flex freely or is it curved and abnormal, meaning they are at a high risk of serious spinal injuries?

🐶 Are their legs long and straight or are they short and twisted, predisposing them to mobility problems?

🐶 Are their eyes set comfortably in their heads with eyelids they can close and open normally or do those eyes bulge out or have drooping eyelids that mean they are vulnerable to many painful conditions?

🐶 Do they have a mouth large enough for all their teeth to be positioned correctly and fit together well? Or are their jaws misshapen and short meaning those teeth are squashed together and they struggle with an under or over-bite?

🐶 Do they have a long, healthy tail they can wag unimpeded? Or is it short and kinked?

🐶 Do they have merle coat colouring, making them genetically vulnerable to many different and debilitating health conditions?

Today a new health assessment tool for dogs has been launched that will answer the question; ‘Is this dog innately healthy?’ and we are asking all prospective dog owners and breeders to take the quiz and find out the answer before they purchase or breed from a dog.

Because our dogs have gone too far when it comes to extreme conformations and we are causing unnecessary and needless suffering.

We have to stop producing and buying dogs with inherent traits that mean they will struggle and this is a simple and quick way to ensure that you are not doing that.

Please take the test and share the word!

👇🏻🙌🏻👇🏻

https://www.innatehealthassessment.org/

17/11/2025

This is a great bit of advice from International Cat Care!

Cats are not social feeders, so you need to make sure they are not required to eat together or see another cat while they are eating.

Which isn’t always easy but this arrangement, with the feeders in the same place but hidden from each others view is a great compromise!

Prevention is better than cure! 🐱 In our free nurse journal, find out how to help prevent problem behaviours in cats with iCatCare’s Cat Wellbeing and Behaviour Advisor, Alex Taylor RVN, including:

➡️ Prevalence of unwanted behaviours in cats
➡️ How to meet the physical and social environmental needs of cats
➡️ First aid for problem behaviours

🤩 With a free iCatCare Veterinary Society Nurse Membership, you can view Feline Focus by using your portal login details 👉 https://go.icatcare.org/Feline-Focus-Library-Forum

Write for us! ✍️ Share something you are passionate about or submit a case report. Get in touch [email protected] 📧

13/11/2025

What I would, and wouldn’t, buy for my pets in my local !

What is on your pet’s Christmas list?

12/11/2025

One week to go!

I am very excited that this time next week I will be in London ready for The London Vet Show!

And it's not too late to join me!

Register for £549+VAT using the code CAT546 and don't forget that BVA and BEVA members receive further discounts!

See you there?

👇🏻🙌🏻👇🏻

https://rfg.circdata.com/publish/LVS25/

11/11/2025

It’s great to see the message at the end of this post.

These breeds are wonderful dogs and deserve loving, safe homes but it is important to acknowledge that their looks will most likely cause them to have problems, and potential adopters need to be aware of the challenges they might face.

This month marks a whole year since Leon arrived at RSPCA Brighton - that's 365 days of waiting for a second chance of happiness 💔

He's a sweet, affectionate boy who loves human company, but he found life with children a bit stressful in his previous home.

If you could offer Leon a calm home where he can finally relax and be loved, apply to adopt him: https://bit.ly/3LaZDTH

*Leon has exaggerated physical features which may lead to health issues in future. Potential adopters should be aware that he may require extra care and support post-adoption, including associated veterinary costs.*