Optimising the feline environment

Sarah Heath's workshop on optimising the feline environment, started by looking at feline emotional health. She explained the role of positive (engaging) emotions and then covered negative emotions, which are not bad emotions, but are more about cats protecting themselves. Sarah explained how the protective emotions can lead to behaviours that repel or avoid a potential threat or behaviours which enable the cat to find out more through inhibition or appeasement. She showed how these protective emotions help to keep the cat safe and are therefore beneficial, as long as they are triggered in an appropriate context. Sarah explained the concept of emotional resilience which enables the individual cat to maintain a lower resting level of emotional arousal and to recover after being emotionally aroused,

Natural feline social behaviours influence the behaviour of cats within our families. Sarah explored the five pillars of feline environmental needs and explained how creation of an optimal environment influences both emotional and physical health. Taking each pillar in turn Sarah discussed how emotions are affected if these pillars are not met and cats are left living in a suboptimal environment.