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Hi, my name is Dr. Uri Burstyn
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I'm a veterinarian in Vancouver, B.C. and I'd like to welcome you to my series of practical skills for pet owners
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I'm here with Mr.Pirate to talk about a question that I got asked quite a few times
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uh, after publishing my squish the cat video and that is: 'why I can't touch my cat?'
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Some people are feeding cats outside and really are wondering why these cats are very standoffish
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Other people have house cats and they're just not that cuddly
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So, I'm making this video to kind of help you understand a little bit as to why that might be
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So, the way I think about it, there's two reasons
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why a cat may not be super cuddly
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behavioral and medical
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So let's talk about behavioral causes of why a cat may not be that cuddly
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The thing we need to understand is that cats were never domesticated
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They co-evolved to live with humans, but they're vicious wild predators that choose to live with us
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Not animals that were selected for wanting to live with us.
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Now this little predator right here, obviously
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falls on one end of the spectrum where he has pretty strong human affinity. He loves being around people.
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Um, other cats fall on the other end of the spectrum
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where they're essentially a wild animal, where they just don't care for humans at all
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And, that's just the way they're born
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You know, I think there's a rough estimate that 10 to 20 percent of kittens will never make a terrifically
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cuddly, close, house pet
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because they just don't care to be around people; they kinda want to be doing their own thing in the wild
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And, and that's just a fact of life
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So, you know, if a cat doesn't want to be cuddled by you, maybe they're just not a cuddly cat
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Having said that, cats do acquire a lot of learned behaviors from their mother.
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So, again, if you have a kitten that
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has been brought up by a cat who's afraid of humans, such as a feral cat,
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Uh, that kitten may learn to be human averse and they may also unlearn it
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So, I'm not gonna tell you to give up on every feral cat or 'every cat's not cuddly'
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Sometimes with some patience and love and a careful attention
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You *can* make a cat who's afraid of humans quite fond of hanging out with you
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But, you may run into an issue or you just have a cat who's just not that into people and that's okay
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that's just the way they are. You may get into
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a scenario where you have a cat that, whose mother just didn't teach it to be into people and now,
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Again may be a little standoffish, but they might eventually warm up to you
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Come on, little guy
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So, Mr. Pirate here is obviously very into people
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Hey *cat kiss*
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But again, I raised him, so I'm basically his mother
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I raised him from when he was a week old, bottle fed him, um
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so, not only does he have a high affinity for humans, but he also learned that people are kind of okay
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So, behavioral issues, just intrinsic personality may be one reason why your cat's not super cuddly
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another reason that I come across
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very often as a veterinarian is chronic pain and
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pain in cats can be really really subtle, it is incredibly difficult to diagnose.
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People often say to me: 'Well, you know, he's not whining or anything'
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'I don't know if he's in pain or not' and they're right. You know, dogs are social animals
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they display pain, they display signs of discomfort
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Cats are not. Signs of discomfort in cats can be really subtle
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uh, an increased aggression is one of them
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Hah, sweetheart, you want to be on the shoulder? Hang out on the table a little longer? Okay?
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So, aggression is a really common sign of pain and chronic pain can lead to chronic aggression
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Um, other signs are hiding, eating less, really subtle stuff! sleeping more in some cases
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Um, but let's talk about aggression. A cat who's in pain will snap and react
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even Mr. Pirate, you know, when he's, if he's sore and I poked him in the sore spot
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He might turn around and hiss at me or swipe at me or snap at me because that's just how he communicates
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Right now he's communicating he wants to be up on my shoulder
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but you know, natural way that cats are communicating is: bite, swat, hiss - and people get put off by that
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Cats in chronic pain is a little bit trickier. When you have a cat that's in chronic pain
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They may be completely untouchable
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but if you remove that source of chronic pain then they become a sweetheart, or at least reasonably cuddly at home and
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The most common sources of chronic pain in cats, *the* most common one is a sore tooth
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Dental disease. Resorptive lesions. We see this all the time
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We see cats who cannot be touched; you look in their mouth, you diagnose the problem, you
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do a dental cleaning, you pull the sore tooth
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and the cat becomes a sweetheart! Owners are calling me a week later saying that 'I can't believe how sweet and cuddly'
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'this cat has become, we thought he was just a jerk.' Whereas in fact
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he just had a sore tooth, potentially for years - cats get these things called resorptive lesions
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They're very similar to cavities in humans
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It can be very hard to diagnose, even the cat might have nice-looking teeth
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But it's just a little red spot there that's sensitive
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But these are incredibly painful, even under anesthesia if you touch them the jaw chatters, so even under general anaesthetic
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It'll cause a noxious(?) pain response in the cat
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So, dental pain is probably our number one cause of chronic pain in cats that is
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completely preventable and treatable and, again, we do this all the time
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we see this regularly: cats who are just jerks, you pull a tooth and they become sweethearts
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Uh, as I demonstrated with Sesame
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Something as subtle and seemingly, like,
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Something that's not very obvious like skin... like hair mats
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can cause severe discomfort for a cat and leave them to be completely untouchable, really aggressive animal, whereas in reality
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They're just uncomfortable
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another common cause is
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The neck and back pain, arthritis, and I'm gonna do a whole video on that later
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But arthritis pain can be really subtle, real hard to diagnose
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But it can make a cat cranky and really not wanting to be touched and again, that's something that's manageable
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you get them on some painkillers, you make them lose weight
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You help those cats and they become cuddly and sweet again.
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So, the message I would like you guys to take away from this video is that
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Not all cats are gonna be human-centric or really cuddly
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But not all angry, dangerous, aggressive cats have to be that way
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You have to look for a source of chronic pain
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Find them, treat them. And then at the end of all that, you can have a much nicer cat
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to work with, someone who's relaxed
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much more easy to get along with, can be cuddled, can be patted, will hang out with you
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and it's all about just addressing those sources of chronic pain.
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So that's part one of my video on 'why you can't touch that cat'
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please stay tuned for part two, when we'll discuss some medical reasons
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why certain cats may not want to be patted or picked up
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Please give it a look and once more, thank you very much for watching my videos