Saturday, July 6, 2013

Cheap cat toy #1

inexpensive cat toy
A paper bag with a faux-fur toy thrown in keeps Hero amused...briefly.
Do cats get bored? Yes. Yes they do. They might sit around an awful lot, but cats need mental stimulation and physical activity like the rest of us. Mine live almost wholly indoors, but they do enjoy access to a small courtyard. However, it became a no-go zone with the recent torrential rain.

Hero, my three legged cat, let it be known in no-uncertain terms (that is, by tearing up all paperwork on my desk, smashing a few ornaments on shelves , thundering up and down the hallway at turbo speed and hiding in inappropriate places) that he needed some more-than-usual entertaining.
Driers are dangerous
Hero hides in the clothes drier. 
Enter the paper bag. Snip the handles so no one gets caught in it and it becomes an interesting thing to sit in/on/bite/scratch holes in and ambush unwitting passers-by by jumping out of.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Interview with Hsinyi Cheng: volunteering in shelters

AASG conference
Hsinyi Cheng with SAT's Phil enjoy the sunshine in Sydney.
SAT was very fortunately to spend some time with Taiwanese scholar Hsinyi Cheng, who is speaking at the Australian Animal Studies Group's Life in the Anthropocene conference next week. Hsinyi will be presenting a paper entitled "The Law and Unqualified Lives: Stray Animal Control in Taiwan." Its part of a larger research project about volunteering in shelters.

Shelter volunteers make a huge contribution to the welfare of animals. They save lives, the improve quality of life, and they can make a huge impact on adoption rates of animals. But it isn't always easy. The sheer number of animals involved (especially, according to Hsinyi, in countries such as Taiwan) means not all can be saved. 

Can you tell us a bit about your background?

My background is communication and cultural studies. I got my masters in communications and cultural studies on Taiwan and now I’m doing an MPhil in the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. My research is about volunteering in public animal shelters in Taiwan. The title of my project is “Saving Lives in Wasted Places: the Practice of Volunteers in Public Animal Shelters in Taiwan.”

What exactly does that involve?

My focus is on why people are motivated to volunteer and what are their expectations of working in those shelters. I am trying to find out more about how they care for animals and how they feel about shelters. If we think about animal welfare in shelters, it isn’t only about animals. We need to pay attention to the people working there. My research has involved conducting interviews and participant observation of volunteers for two months in two shelters in Taiwan.

What made you interested in this topic?

A lot of work has been done on volunteering, with many studies of conservation volunteers, but there are not many studies looking at shelter volunteers. I’m quite interested in the human-animal interaction in shelters, especially when volunteers are faced with euthanasia of animals. I want to know how they deal with this and how they help animals. Compared to conservation projects, the motivation to work in shelters is a bit more complex. Maybe some volunteers find themselves helping to decide which animals are more adoptable. Some animals can be adopted. For others, it may only be the case that volunteers can help these animals feel better. Volunteers have different ways of helping animals and they have to handle their feelings as well. They may feel a conflict – am I helping this animal or just sending it to euthanasia? The caring/killing complex. I am seeking to find out how they care for animals and how they regard their contribution to animal welfare.

You have talked about space in shelters being an important issue before. Can you expand on that?

The environment in shelters in Taiwan is not very good, especially in shelters located in remote regions as there is not much money, so the quality of space is not good. But you need to consider the needs of the animals, as well as the needs of visitors and the needs of workers in designing shelters. When I saw one shelter in Taiwan they had a big cage for many dogs. My first thought was how could so many dogs be kept in one cage? They will fight each other. When I came back more than six months later, the dogs were housed in small cages on their own or with another dog. But the volunteers said this was more stressful for the dogs as they had no way to move to another place.

How do you think animal shelters could be improved?

Taking care of animals is a professional job. If you want volunteers you need to provide training and show people the best way to care for animals. For volunteers in Taiwan it is difficult because human resources are limited. Big shelters might have three, maximum four veterinarians caring for 300-500 animals, so it is impossible. They need trained volunteers who can observe the animals, do the walking and training and so on. Sometimes they just help relieve the stress of the animals. Most shelter animals feel very nervous.
But if there are too many volunteers, it can be hard to manage. If someone doesn’t pay attention to hygiene, if they don’t wash their hands and grab another puppy, it can result in infection which can kill animals. Shelters with a good volunteer recruitment policy and systematic training can help more animals be adopted. But even those animals that aren’t adopted may feel better with the attention.

It depends a bit on how much money can afford to spend on the shelter environment. But one volunteer told me that if you build a fancy shelter, but you don’t run it well or don’t use it well, it can be a horrible hell for animals. To make dogs more friendly and more adoptable you need to spend more time with them. In this way, volunteers can improve animal welfare in shelters.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Three things I learned: lymphoma in cats

Lil' Puss Fawcett, who passed away due to complications of suspected lymphoma. As you can see, life was pretty awesome for Lil.


The Animal Referral Hospital recently hosted an educational information at the Homebush hospital. One of the speakers, oncologist Sandra Nguyen, talked about lymphoma, a malignant transformation of B or T lymphocytes. There are other round cell tumours in companion animals (mast cell tumours, transmissible venereal tumours, histiocytic tumours etc) but in cats lymphoma is the most common. I have a personal vendetta against this affliction as it claimed my gorgeous cat Lil two years ago.

Sandra N is a former classmate of mine and it was great to see her command the floor while everyone took copious notes. I learned a lot, notably that

  • Cats that are FeLV positive are 60 times more likely to develop lymphoma than FeLV negative cats; and cats with both FeLV and FIV are 80 times more likely to develop lymphoma.
  • The talk helped clarify some salient points regarding treatment and prognosis of high and low grade lymphoma. High grade lymphoma is more readily diagnosed via fine needle aspirate and cytology (biopsies are usually required to differential low grade lymphoma from IBD); only 50 per cent of cats with high grade lymphoma respond to treatment with a median survival of 6 months while 98 per cent of cats with low grade lymphoma respond, with a median survival of 704 days. Response to treatment is the most reliable prognostic indicator, but cats with low grade lymphoma may take 2-3 months to show a robust clinical response. In cats, there is no real difference in the prognosis between B and T cell lymphomas. (BTW treatment for low grade lymphoma is often oral medication - people get frightened off by the word "chemotherapy" but are surprised to hear that it can be extremely straightforward and administered at home).
  • Unlike people, who experience a higher rate of side effects associated with chemotherapy, around 30 per cent of cats develop side effects to chemotherapy, only 5% require hospitalisation and death due to chemotherapy complications is likely less than 1%. Cats are less likely to develop sepsis with a low while cell count than dogs.

When detected early, many lymphomas can be treated and managed quite well with excellent quality of life for cats. Of course cancer can be an absolutely unforgiving disease that wins despite our best efforts, but in many cases there is potential to give an affected cat extended quality of life.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Why small things matter...or...changing the world: one small animal at a time

puppy with elizabethan collar
Puppy in hospital. (She is wearing an Elizabethan collar because she rather enjoyed eating her intravenous line. She had severe gastrointestinal disease but made a full recovery with treatment). 

I'm as susceptible to an inspirational quote as the next person. These are from a fantastic book, humbly entitled How to Change the World by John-Paul Flintoff.

“The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was one of the first to observe that history should more accurately be considered to consist of the combined effect of the many small things that ordinary individuals do every day: ‘An infinitely large number of infinitesimally small actions’...and its not only the things we do that make history, its also the things we don’t do.”p8
“Changing the world is a job that never ends. In that sense, its not so much a job as a state of mind: attentive to the way things are, willing to share responsibility for it..People engaged in this work will try to look for the upside, find resources where others might overlook them, and recognise allies in sometimes unexpected places. They focus on the long-term but always think how to take small actions right now. They are compassionate and even humble, but experience life as an adventure, rather than a series of oppressive incidents entirely beyond their control. And rather than complain that the work never ends, they see reason to be glad: there will always be something else to do.”p128

I think as vets sometimes we can forget the importance of the little things we do - interacting with patients, learning a bit more about their owners. But all those little things make a difference to our patients, our clients and to the kind of people we become.

Of course, Flintoff's book is an excellent read if you want to change the world in bigger ways as well. I just like these quotes about paying attention to details.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Three things I learned: dental radiology

There's a big artefact on this radiograph, but right beside it
is a nasty tooth root abscess.
Last week we were lucky to have Christine Hawke of Sydney Pet Dentistry visit the practice and host a workshop on dental radiology. Positioning small animal patients can be tricky, but she broke it down and I learned a few things in the process.
  1. The root of the canine is usually over the second premolar (a trap for beginners is to aim for the crown, but we can see that - we really want to be aiming for the root).
  2. If you want to split the roots on the radiograph (for example, the carnassial or fourth premolar), use a horizontal oblique view.
  3. Anatomical structures such as the mandibular foramen can be superimposed over a mandibular tooth root giving the impression of a periapical abscess. If in doubt take a horizontal oblique view.