A huge thank you to everyone who donated money over the past few months. Whether it was a few pound or some loose change, every penny makes a difference.

Over £126 has been donated to The Cinnamon Trust, a charity dedicated to helping elderly or terminally ill owners and their pets, in a variety of situations.

They have recently let us know that their tumble dry broke down at one of their sanctuaries and was not fixable, so our donation has gone towards buying a new one in these cold winter months.

Do you know if your cats are friends or foes? Best buds or just tolerating each other?

Most cats are happier living the single life, this is how many will choose to live in the wild. However, some will live with siblings or their mother their whole life. In many cases this works fine but it can also go wrong.

Adult cats living in multicat households often simply tolerate each other which can be manageable, but can cause stress. These situations can prevent a cat showing their true character, cause behavioural issues such as fighting or inappropriate urination and they can even lead to health problems such as vomiting, diarrhoea, cystitis and skin disease.

Many stress signs and interactions between cats can be missed or simply misread by us. The Cats Protection have created a very helpful (and very cute) video, to help us differentiate between friendly behaviours and not-so-friendly behaviours in our households.

Click here to watch the video.

There are things we can do to make life in a multicat household healthier and happier for all concerned, as mentioned in the video, separate feeding areas, bowls, litter trays, beds and scratching posts will help to reduce stress, as each cat will be able to have space and not have to share with another cat unless they choose to do so.

Other aids to assist in reducing stress and improving feline relationships includ products such as Feliway Classic and Feliway Friends. These produce good pheromones which are associated with feeling safe and content which can make a big difference.

Click here for more information on Feliway.

We like to think of ourselves as serving the local community but now and again we don’t mind venturing further afield. So when the BBC asked us to help with their piece on vegan diets for dogs, Sarah Ginger and Fizz stepped up. The piece first aired on the 1330 London news on BBC 1 on the 27th September 2018, with a longer version on the 1830 news the same day. A short extract can be found on the BBC website at:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-london-45665974/should-dogs-go-vegan

See if you can spot the slight BBC captioning error…

Sarah and Fizz are now considering entering into talks to present their own show on various aspects of the animal world. Suggestions for titles welcome.

You may have noticed increasing numbers of cats around our clinic. Well, they certainly know a soft touch when they see one! There has been a feral cat colony living around our property for many years but we used to only see them occasionally. Then last year a beautiful queen, we call Eleanor, had not one but two litters of kittens right outside our backdoor. So then there were 8 kittens all living here and as if lured by the promise of top class veterinary care we now have a multitude of other feral cats living around Hope Vets. We have set up a cat shed for our most loyal crew which they are very much enjoying.

Obviously these are feral cats so they can’t be touched so it is not an easy task but we managed to catch and neuter 12 feral cats last year. There are many more to go but we are hoping to outwit more of them this year.

Despite them being more wild-animal than pet, we are all really taken with them. We watch “cat TV” daily and really enjoy watching them interact with each other. As you can see from the many photos, they all have names and different personalities and are all part of the Hope Vets crazy family.