Robin is an emergency vet in a second-line hospital and lives in Glasgow. Together with him, we delve deeper into his profession as a vet and what cats need for the best quality of life. Specifics, diseases and accidents? We'll discuss it all with you.
Introducing!
My name is Robin, I'm 28 years old and I live in Glasgow,
Scotland. I am an emergency veterinarian in a second-line hospital.
At the moment I work for Vets Now Glasgow, a second-line
hospital that simultaneously receives patients from surrounding clinics for
emergency and care outside of working hours. I mainly work at night for this
reason.
I started here in July 2022 as an "intern", this
is a graduated veterinarian who would like to gain more knowledge and
experience in an environment with specialists in certain parts of veterinary
medicine, and stayed there after my internship as an emergency doctor.
Unfortunately, my work schedule and my living environment
are, in my opinion, not suitable for having an animal. Personally, I feel that
I cannot provide the necessary care and love that a pet needs at the moment,
which I find very unfortunate. This always gives me a lot of motivation to
visit my parents and their pets, two wonderful Bernese mountain dogs.
I would like to take a cat into my home in the future when I
can offer him/her enough.
Why did you choose this profession?
Veterinary medicine was actually never my first choice,
contrary to what most veterinarians say.
That doesn't mean that I don't have a connection with
animals, on the contrary. We have always had pets with my parents and I learned
from an early age to take care of them and built a special connection with
them.
However, for work I wanted to practice a profession that I
could make people happy with and help them in difficult situations. Through a
friend I then ended up at veterinary medicine in Antwerp and after a few years
I noticed that there is so much to achieve within veterinary medicine, both for
the animal itself but also for the connection between the owner and the animal.
This gave me so much energy and motivation to complete my studies that I did
the hard years and have now found a very nice job in Glasgow.
Why do you think cats need a scratching post? And what else do they need to live nicely indoors and outdoors?
It is very important that animals, not just cats, can
exercise their normal behaviors.
For chickens, for example, it is very important that they
can dust bathe. If animals are no longer able to perform this behavior, they
will show other behavior as a replacement, this is also called a stereotypy,
and sometimes these are not good for the animal.
Sharpening and grinding their nails is normal behavior for
cats. When a cat goes outside, they will use trees for this. Nowadays, cats are
much more likely to stay indoors, or live in an apartment without an
opportunity to go outside. A crow pole is a good substitute for cats to be able
to perform their normal behavior.
Every cat is different and has different things they like. I
think it is therefore very important to tailor certain things to your cat. As
long as the basic needs such as food, drink and shelter are there and the cat
can exercise its natural behavior, they should have a good life.
What peculiarities, diseases and accidents in cats do you often encounter in this work?
Unfortunately, we often see cats, especially male cats, with
urinary and urination problems. Sometimes it can happen that cats get a bladder
infection and that this causes an obstruction of the urinary tract. At that
point, it is no longer possible for the cat to urinate, which can lead to major
problems, and even cardiac arrest.
We often hear a story from the owner that the cat behaves
strangely, often goes to the litter box but does not produce anything there, or
that it seems that the cat is constipated. In some situations, we even see that
the cat vomits and is painful in its belly. We would like to see these patients
as soon as possible to remedy the blockage.
There are several causes for these bladder infections. Most
people immediately think of a bacterial infection, but this is only the case in
about 2% of these cases.
Other causes are crystals or bladder stones, but in most
cases we see that there is no medical cause for this inflammation. Multiple
studies have shown that there is a connection with stress in cats and these
bladder infections, and I often hear stories of other animals in the house,
moving or renovating, or other stressful situations with these cats.
I therefore advise the owners to reduce all forms of stress
as much as possible after the treatment, in order to prevent relapses as much
as possible.
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