The importance of scent for cats in care - video transcript

Hello I’m Gemma Lovegrove, Veterinary Manager for Cats Protection

Imagine if you were captured by aliens and taken off to another planet, and you didn’t know if you were going to get anything to eat or drink, or even if you were going to be safe – well this is what it’s like for a cat to be taken into a rescue environment.

Humans rely quite heavily on sights and sounds to tell if a situation they are in is safe or not. Cats rely much more heavily on their sense of smell. While this pen may look safe and comfortable to us, for a cat there’s nothing familiar in here. There are no cat scents to help them feel safe.

There are several things we can do to help with this. Where possible, when a cat is brought in by an owner, ask them to bring an item in with them that will have the cat's scent on it. You could ask them to bring some of their bedding, an item of clothing, or even an old towel. Putting this in the pen with the cat will help to reassure the cat that it’s a safe place to be.

When cleaning the pen, although it essential for disease control, we are inadvertently taking away all the scents that are familiar to the cat. It would be like going to sleep in your own home with all your furniture – everything that makes you feel safe around you – and waking up somewhere that’s completely unfamiliar. To help with this, we use something called the ‘double bed system’, where we will take one piece of bedding away to be cleaned when we clean the pen, but leaving one piece in there so there is some scent continuity.

Lastly, when a cat is going home, you can ask the new owners to bring something in from home, which will not only have the scent of the new home on there, but after leaving it in the pen for a few days, the cat will be able to put his own scent on there. Sending that home with the cat can help him settle into his new home.

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