Calm Cats, Happy Homes: Natural Solutions to Ease Feline Anxiety | The Feline Wellness Summit with Julie-Anne Heart

 Do you have an anxious cat and do you know how to help your cat if they are anxious? Welcome to the cat dad show. My name is scott colby I'm about to share with you a clip of my interview with julie and heart and this is a topic we chatted about Specifically, I asked her what is the 1st thing a pet parent should do when they notice that their cat is anxious.

This is Julianne specialties. Her business is naturally cats and she provides holistic help. For anxious cat parents with anxious cats. If you want to listen to the entire interview with Julie Anne, you can go to felinewellnesssummit. com. She was one of 21 interviews I did with feline wellness experts.

You can grab a free ticket again, just go to felinewellnesssummit. com for now. Enjoy this clip with Julianne.

That is a great question. So the first thing I would say is always to get a vet check done because you never ever know what physical issues may be underlying behavioral or emotional problems.

So it's really important because cats can mask pain, discomfort, they can, you know, they can hide a lot of issues. So if you're concerned about your cat in any way, shape, please go and see, see a vet and make sure that there's no physical issue. The second I would say is, if the vet has ruled everything out, great, pause before you take any options in terms of medication for anxiety, because sometimes anxiety can be dealt with in the home, with the environment, with the relationships, with the cat, and, and so you can always explore other options before you go down that route.

So, It can be difficult to spot anxiety in cats because they are great at hiding. They are great at hiding how they feel, what's going on. And I think really the first thing to notice is that cats have emotional needs and cats can suffer from anxiety. And this is something fairly new that people aren't Perhaps fully aware of that, you know, cats can have anxiety and anxiety slightly different to stress, you know, cats get stressed.

If they go to the vets, it's a one off event. They have a stress response. They deal with that physically, emotionally, energetically. And then it goes away. They come home, they can settle, they can deal with it. But anxiety is that prolonged, like, anticipation of things being an issue or of, of, in a cat's, um, situation of basically of a threat.

They're, they're always conscious of a threat. And that's something that we need to be mindful of.

Thank you. Gosh, such, such a, like you said, a new topic. One I never even would have really considered. Like you, like you mentioned, I am familiar with, you know, a stressful situation taking the cat into the car, right?

Yes. Eight car rides and they're going to the vet, but having more, more of a, uh, a prolonged, um, emotional state like anxiety is something that, uh, maybe we haven't considered out there.

Top Tips to Alleviate Cat Anxiety

So, um, What is maybe the top, I know probably you have a lot of tips and they're all important, but what is maybe your top three ways that a cat parent can help alleviate a cat's anxiety?

Oh, just three. Okay. So what I would say is if you've noticed your cat's got anxiety, it's understand where it's coming from, you know, and Meet the cat where they are. So this isn't like something necessarily that you do in the home and I have got a couple of those to share. Meeting the cat where they are is really important because We have expectations as guardians, as owners, as pet parents of our cats, whether we like to think we do or not, we do, you know, we expect them to eat, we expect them to be healthy.

And when it comes to the behavior and anxiety, you know, we expect them to be a certain way. And when you start to recognize that your cats. Maybe have anxiety of strangers coming to the home or they have anxiety about other pets or animals in the home You can understand how you can help and support them.

So the first top tip really is understanding what what your cat is experiencing and why, and then you can look at how you can help them with it. I'm just gonna put my light on a second.

Oh,

that's a bit better. Um, so that's the first one is to meet your cat where they are, and then you can start to take action. So the second step, I would say, is understanding their capacity, you know, what can they do? So like play, brilliant for anxious cats, if they're willing to engage. If you've got a cat that's hiding under the bed, there's a slim chance that they're going to want to come and, you know, play with a rod or a fish toy with you.

You know, whereas if you've got a cat like my Leo, he has kind of like stranger danger anxiety. So if someone walks across the front of our house or, um, Uh, someone comes to the door like an amazon delivery person, you know, he runs out of the window out of the cat flap through the window Not out the window.

Um Because he doesn't like strangers in the home, so now I tell him when I can see someone coming, I can tell him, you know, quick, buddy, go outside, someone's coming to the door, so I meet him where he is, I understand what he needs, and I try to do the best I can to support him with that. Play, for him, he'll only do it very occasionally when his brother's not around.

He'll only do it maybe two or three times a month, but if he does get a bit quirky and his little bum wiggles, I will delve right in and I will get the ribbon that I know that he likes and I will play with him and it only lasts for about four or five minutes. He, it doesn't last for 20 minutes, but those few minutes between the two of us, it's a beautiful bonding activity.

It's good for my anxiety. It's good for his anxiety. So that would be the second one. And the third, I would say,

The third one I would say, so this is going to be unconventional.