Happy Cats, Happy Homes: Enriching Your Indoor Cat’s Life | The Feline Wellness Summit With Dr. Lynn Bahr

 Welcome to the cat dad show. My name is Scott Colby. And if you have indoor cats, like I do, you probably want to know how to keep your indoor cat. happy and healthy and keep their life enriched. That's why I'm pleased to bring with you this clip of an interview I did with Dr. Lynn Barr, and this is what we talked about.

Specifically, one of the questions I asked her was, um, you know, a lot of people think of cats as low maintenance pets, and I wanted to know from her standpoint, what is the biggest misconception about keeping Indoor cats happy and healthy. A Dr. Lin is a veterinarian specializing in feline medicine and behavior with a focus on indoor cat enrichment.

She's CEO of a company called Desi and Rue which makes amazing, uh, innovative enrichment products, toys, uh, for cats. Uh, so again, this is a clip of my interview with Dr. Lynn. She was a guest of my feline wellness summit. If you would like to listen to the entire interview, as well as interviews with 20 other feline wellness experts, just go to feline wellness summit.

com. You can grab a free ticket, but for now, enjoy this clip with Dr. Lynn.

Well, the whole topic of, um, low maintenance pet is the myth itself.

Uh, cats are anything. But they're actually quite high maintenance. Um, indoor cats have been taken from outdoors where they had the freedom to roam and walk and, and, and, um, exhibit their natural, normal instincts. And we've put them in four walls and now enclosed them in an environment that, um, is somewhat reminiscent of a zoo or, you know, housing, confined housing.

And with that, we need to step in and now give them all the things that they're missing. And that's takes a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of imagination, um, in order to accomplish that. So indoor enrichment is essential for good health and well being. It affects their health. It's. We know stress and, and, um, situations that are, impact us negatively will impact our health.

And, um, so I moved my focus from veterinary medicine, treating them medically to really now treating them more holistically and looking at the whole household and making sure that, um, Cats indoors are giving, given all the resources and important things that they need to stay healthy.

Yeah. Thank you. Um, for you, you mentioned that they're missing out on a lot of things by coming in from the outside.

Uh, what are some of the things that are indoor cats are missing?

Importance of Fresh Air and Sunshine

Well, the easiest ones and the first ones that I think that are essential is fresh air and sunshine.

Um,

indoor cats don't breathe fresh air, and that's something nobody really thinks about, but it's super important. Um, in our home, they're breathing in the chemicals that we clean with, the chemicals that are on our sheets and our, you know, carpet and in our furniture.

Um, they don't get a chance to really breathe fresh air. We also keep it climate controlled indoors. And so cats coats and and their whole rhythm is tied to the seasons. Yet indoors, we have the heat on in the winter, we have the air conditioning on in the summer, totally opposite of what is normal for a cat.

Um So just starting out with fresh air, that is essential. And it's the best tip I give to, uh, pet parents is open the windows. Okay. Let your cats have some fresh air. They don't know their environment, they don't know their neighborhood, they don't have any smells other than, like I said, what we cook, what we clean, what we bring inside.

Yeah, and it's so funny, I mentioned to you I had two previous senior cats that are no longer with us and now I have two one year old cats. But now that I'm kind of studying this topic and learning from all the great guests in the summer, I'm, I'm so aware of like, Oh my gosh, I didn't do the, I didn't do this or that for my first two cats.

Now I get to, you know, provide almost, uh, essentially a better life, uh, for my new cats, which is one of the reasons I wanted to do this summit to actually learn and to provide that information to other cat owners out there. Um, what is, since, since my cats are still young and they're still, you know, they're just one year old.

Um, what is one simple enrichment?

Simple Enrichment Ideas for Indoor Cats

idea that pet parents, cat parents, besides opening the windows, what can we try today to improve the cat's quality of life?

So every day I asked myself and more importantly, I think my cats asked me when they look at me is What can I do different for them today? Um, you know, every day is the same for them.

It's the same four walls. It's the same furniture. It's the same schedule. Everything is just the same. If a cat were outdoors, they would be investigating their neighborhood. They'd be walking around. They would check out their house and see if other creatures had come into their territory. They're hunting.

They're Quite active. And yet in our homes, there's just the same thing every single day. So I'm always asking myself, what can I do different today? Whether it is opening up a closet door that they haven't been in, or it's bringing out a new toy, or it is figuring out a new game that we're going to play every day, like I said, like they'll, they'll be there looking at me and looking at me.

And that's when I go. Let's do something different today.