Managing Stress-induced Behaviors

Meri Hall, RVT, CVT, LVT, LATG, VTS (SAM), veterinary technician of internal medicine, from Veterinary Specialty Hospital of Palm Beach Gardens, explains how to deal with stress-induced behaviors.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“There is no actual for [interstitial] cystitis or hyper-grooming. What you’re doing is preventing a behavior or a natural occurrence from happening. The environmental enrichment helps to reduce the stress, therefore, helps to reduce the incidences of the hyper-grooming or the interstitial cystitis.

Now, the interstitial cystitis is more of a litterbox issue; most of the time, there’s a stressor involving just the litterbox, whether it be another cat in the household, the substrate isn’t what the animal wants, or the box isn’t in the right place anymore, or they want it in a different place [altogether]. The enrichment, what that does is [that] it helps to try and identify a stressor, and then relieve the stress for that particular animal.”