Mark Cousins, DVM, DABVP (feline)

The premise of this presentation is that feline medicine is good business. The keys to tapping into this market are several: understanding the significance of the feline market in your practice today and its future potential, understanding the psyche of the feline client and recognizing the different psychographic profile of cat vs. dog owners, using preventative medicine, specifically feline total parasite control, as a tool to practice better feline medicine, and, ultimately, realizing an increased feline average per client charge by practicing a higher quality feline medicine.

This presentation concerns the survival and subsequent recovery of a small feline veterinary practice from two events, either of which could have easily shuttered this business. The first event was a devastating fire set by an arsonist which not only resulted in the loss of animal life but which also rendered the business a total loss. The second event was Hurricane Katrina, which literally and functionally destroyed New Orleans and its business environment for months.

The recognition of the development of potentially malignant tumors arising from injection sites became one of the most significant events in veterinary medicine in the 1980's and beyond. So significant, in fact, that it caused an entire profession to re-evaluate the way preventative medicine should be considered from a medical and an economic perspective.