This morning, our cat Linus had an appointment with our veterinarian. Linus is not a big fan of the vet’s office and pretty much everyone hears him coming as soon as we step out of the car.
We’re always looking for ways to make our pets more comfortable at the vet’s office and recently ran across this advice in Temple Grandin’s excellent book, Animals Make Us Human:
I tell people to bring a bathmat with a rubber backing from home to put on the table. Slipping causes panic in all animals.
We decided to give it a try this morning. We packed up a small bathmat with a rubber backing, first using it at the bottom of his cat carrier (a hard plastic shell carrier). It seemed to help; the mat didn’t slip around inside the carrier like a towel does and it gave Linus something to grip as we drove to the vet.
When we got to the vet’s office, Linus and the bathmat came out on the examining table. Although Linus got a little restless during the wait for the blood test results and wouldn’t stay up on the table, when he was on the table, he was on his mat!
We’re giving the rubber bathmat a big paws up and we’ll be taking it along on all our cat vet visits in the future!
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