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International cat care relaunched it's cat friendly clinic scheme at BSAVA today. The scheme already has a great deal of its own momentum but they've sharpened up the logo and made it warm, welcoming and attractive to consumers.

Much of the presentation at the launch was about icatcare's efforts to help unowned cats internationally. They already support capture, neuter and release programmes but they are increasing the amount of effort into looking for means of non-surgically neutering cats. Whatever that future is however - pharmaceutical or immunlogical - I cannot see vets not being involved in that as wherever you are in the world there has to be a distribution channel for medicines that knows what it's doing, otherwise things go wrong and often welfare is compromised.

I like the new logo; it's simple and attractive and something I think you'd want to be associated with. I have also learned personally from some of the new information about how best to accommodate the different healthcare needs of cats and I suspect many vets and veterinary nurses have found the same. If you need to know more you can go to http://www.catfriendlyclinic.org , although when I click on that link today it actually takes me to the cat friendly practice section of the icatcare website.

Another new development apparently is that they have gold, silver and bronze accreditation. That leaves me with a slight sense of unease as that will inevitably draw comparisons with the Practice Standards Scheme. The reasoning behind the change is good as feedback to Icatcare has apparently told them that not having a lower level of accreditation meant that for example some of the mobile veterinary services could not be part of the scheme when in reality there probably isn't a practice in the country that could not be better at dealing with cats and much of what needs to be done is simple.

Icatcare have recognised that veterinary nurses are key to the success of the scheme as so much of what needs to be done to help cats feel more at ease in a clinical situation falls neatly into the category of good nursing skills.

Certainly I would be disappointed at any comparisons with the RCVS Practice Standards Scheme, which is something that takes a lot of time and effort to get involved in. Getting involved in the cat friendly practice scheme is easier than the RCVS PSS at any level.

The Dalai Lama has a famous quote that goes along the lines of there's only one day that you can do something and that's today. Yesterday has gone, tomorrow isn't here yet so today is the day to do something. The beauty of the cat friendly practice scheme is that it's something that you can do today, there aren't the same barriers to entry as the PSS, and doing something today is going to make a real difference to your cat patients.

So even if you haven't the time to be at BSAVA Congress, if you deal with cats in any capacity, logging onto catfriendlyclinic.org is something to do today.

Postscript from Caroline:
You are already accredited?
Well, you'll be pleased to hear that owners are searching for cat friendly clinics; indeed many of the practices listing on vetmart.net are finding greater interest in their Cat Friendly listings than their general practice listings! So what you may want to do today is register with vetmart and make sure all your veterinary services are listed, including your Cat Friendly status, so that you can be found by owners searching for you.