Got a Cat Vet Nightmare? We Want to Hear Your Horror Stories

If you’ve ever wanted the chance to kvetch about your cat’s doctor, here’s your chance. In honor of the spooky season, Gizmodo is on the prowl for horror stories about your cat’s veterinary care. Those inclined to talk about their experiences in general at the vet—good or bad—can also share their tales with animal behavior researchers at the University of California, Davis.

Compared to dogs, cats just don’t see the doctor as often for check-ups. A lot of this resistance can come from past harrowing encounters that cats and their owners have had with vets, according to Nancy Hernandez, an undergraduate researcher in UC Davis’ Animal Welfare and Epidemiology Lab. And in their latest research, Hernandez and her team are hoping to unpack some of the reasons why it’s not so easy to take cats to the vet.

“Many veterinary practices follow published veterinary guidelines to set up their waiting rooms, exam rooms, treatment areas, and to also guide their cat handling techniques. Yet previous research has found that approximately 60% of cat owners do not take their cats for annual veterinary visits due to their cat’s expression of fear and anxiety during physical examinations. The expression of these negative emotions leads the owners to also feel stressed. This overall negative experience hinders owner willingness to take their cats for routine veterinary visits,” she told Gizmodo in an email. “With this context in mind, our main research question is: Are cat caregiver perceptions in accordance with veterinary guideline recommendations?”

Personally speaking, both me and my cat—frequent Gizmodo cameo, Cheddar “Chiz” Cara—have never had problems with the quality of the veterinary care provided to us. But there are some things that have made me reluctant to return as often as we should. Namely, it can take far longer than I’d like for the potential costs of Cheddar’s treatments and shots to be fully tallied up and disclosed to me. While I certainly know that vet care often isn’t cheap and I now carry pet insurance for that very reason, the readjusted sticker price of a visit has definitely shocked me. And in general, I do wish that more could be proactively done to make maintaining a pet’s health less of a financial burden on owners. One positive, if modest, development in that direction might be the People and Animals Well-being (PAW) Act, a bill introduced by U.S. House representatives this past September, which would amend the tax code so that pet and service animal care can be paid through health savings accounts (HSA) and flexible spending accounts (FSA).

Hernandez and her team’s survey will specifically ask cat owners about their perceptions regarding cat handling practices during physical exams, their attitudes on cat-only areas in veterinary clinics, and if they’d prefer to stay near their cats while they go through routine procedures like having their blood and urine collected.

“Our questionnaire is designed with questions about previous veterinary appointment experiences, owner’s opinions on general appointment practices, and they will be offered an opportunity to provide any additional details with an open-ended question,” she said. All survey responses will be anonymous, with only basic demographic information about your cat, like their age, sex, and spay/neuter status, being collected. A link to the survey can be seen here.

We at Gizmodo always support a good piece of citizen science research. But for any cat-owners looking to talk or complain about their vet in a more public forum, please also feel free to sound off in the comments below.