Abstract
AAFP
Move aside Dr Google! AAFP launches new website for client education
The AAFP is extremely proud to launch its new educational website for cat caregivers: www.catfriendly.com. Focused entirely on feline health and wellness, catfriendly.com serves up important medical information in an easy-to-read format. All information included on the site is contributed by feline veterinarians and answers caregivers’ most pressing questions about why their cats behave the way they do, how to keep their cats healthy, how to spot feline diseases, why routine veterinary care is so important, and much more. Better education for cat caregivers means better care for cats, period.
Catfriendly.com offers a great source of credible information to link to on your practice website and to pass along to your clients. The site also has a ‘Toy Box’ section with fun interactive content for caregivers that will constantly be updated. Come join the cat friendly movement and check out the site today!
JFMS
Food puzzles create quite a buzz
JFMS has been spreading the word about feline food puzzles globally! An article published in the September 2016 issue, ‘Food puzzles for cats: feeding for physical and emotional wellbeing’, has been featured by news providers around the world – ‘Yahoo! News’, ‘Mail Online’, ‘MSN’, ‘Science Daily’ and ‘The Washington Post’ among them. This attention has seen the article level metric (Altmetric) score soar to 403. This is the highest score by far achieved for any JFMS paper to date and puts the article in the top 5% of all articles tracked by Altmetric.
Alongside the article on the JFMS website, the authors, a group of veterinarians and cat behaviour consultants in the USA, have provided an owner handout ‘Using food puzzles with your cat’, as well as terrific video recordings of cats using a range of mobile, stationary, homemade and store-bought puzzles.
Ingrid Johnson and Mikel Delgado, two of the authors, were at the AAFP Conference in November (see pages 76–77), with Ingrid speaking about environmental enrichment and feline foraging toys, and Mikel presenting a poster (see pages 70–74).
JFMS Open Reports, the online, open access sister title of JFMS, has recently published its 100th article. Launched only in May 2015, the journal is truly international, attracting papers originating from 18 different countries to date – including Morocco and St Kitts and Nevis!
Celebrating the milestone, the Editors Andy Sparkes and Margie Scherk remarked: ‘Our vision for JFMS Open Reports was that it would quickly become a natural choice for publishing high quality case reports, case series and regional reports of value to practitioners and others. With the publication of our 100th paper that vision has been achieved even faster than we dared hope.’
CFC
Vet Record Innovation Award
International Cat Care, the parent charity of ISFM, has won the 2016 Veterinary Record Innovation Award for its Cat Friendly Clinic (CFC) programme. The prestigious annual award is presented to individuals or veterinary teams whose innovation has brought about a change or improvement in an aspect of veterinary practice. In this instance, the award recognises CFC’s impact in increasing cat visits to veterinary practices.
Slovakia has recently gained its first Cat Friendly Clinic – Sibra Centrum in Bratislava has achieved Gold CFC status.
Dr Andy Sparkes (left), iCatCare Veterinary Director, pictured collecting the award in September 2016 from Martin Alder, Veterinary Record Managing Editor
ISFM
2017 veterinary webinar programme
Following the success of the ISFM veterinary webinars in their first year, a new programme has been announced for 2017. It starts this month with the ‘jaundiced cat’ (see page 79 of this issue).
Sam Taylor, Distance Education Coordinator, comments: ‘We are so pleased to offer a practical, high quality webinar series to ISFM veterinary members in 2017. We have designed the talks with presenting signs in mind, to give vets instant “take back to the clinic” information from highly qualified, experienced speakers to help them deal with such cases.
‘We launched our veterinary webinars in 2016, and the talks have been watched by thousands of clinicians around the world, either live, or in ‘listen again’ format. These webinars can still be accessed by members on our website at icatcare.org/learn/webinars.
‘We look forward to helping many more listeners in 2017 to develop confidence in handling any feline case arriving in the consult room!’
Pre-BSAVA congress symposia
Inserted with ISFM members’ copies of this issue of JFMS are details of the ISFM Feline Symposia being held prior to this year’s BSAVA congress in Birmingham, UK. New this year is a programme for veterinary nurses/technicians, as well as the ever-popular veterinary programme. For full details go to: icatcare.org/isfm-symposia
World Feline Congress – call for abstracts
Research abstracts of relevance to feline clinical practice are invited for the 2017 World Feline Congress in Brighton, UK.
Abstracts should present novel information (or highly unusual case material) that has not been previously published, although abstracts that have been presented at a previous conference will be considered. All submitted abstracts will be reviewed, and those accepted will go forward to be presented in poster format. The presenter of an accepted abstract will receive a 50% discount on member rate registration for the congress. Accepted abstracts will be published in JFMS.
Feline behaviour courses under way
One hundred and four students based in 22 countries are currently enjoying the first module of the new iCatCare/ISFM feline behaviour courses. Entitled ‘What am I and where did I come from?’, this first module is teaching students about the behavioural ecology, evolution and domestication of the cat to help them understand what makes a cat a cat. Future modules include ‘What do I perceive and what can I say?’ and ‘Will I grow up to be happy?’.
The courses were developed by iCatCare’s Feline Behaviour Expert Sarah Ellis, who was one of the invited speakers at the AAFP Conference in November (see pages 76–77).
A new cohort of students will start the courses in May. To find out more or to enrol for this second intake, visit icatcare.org/learn/behaviour