Keeping kittens coming back
“The Kitten in the Room” outlines 8 steps for turning kitten visits into lifelong care2:
- Rethink reminder language. Frame the annual visit around catching hidden problems and helping cats live longer, not around shots. Owners in the survey named a longer life for their cat as the biggest reason they would visit more.
- Ask about the whole household. Make other pets a standard intake question for every client, dog owners included. Any cat who isn’t yet a patient gets an invitation.
- Schedule before they leave. The article calls booking the next visit at checkout the most reliable way to keep annual care on schedule.
- Lay out a life-stage plan. During the kitten visits, tell owners what the team will look for at each age so every future visit has a purpose.
- Look at wellness bundles. Monthly payment plans or flat-fee annual packages take the sting out of paying visit by visit, which the article ties to owners dropping off.
- Coach the team on feline messaging. Staff should be ready to explain that cats mask illness, that yearly exams aim at early detection and that a low-stress visit is part of good medicine.
- Make getting there easier. Share carrier training tips online or at discharge.
- Team up with shelters and rescues. Create simple pathways that connect new adopters with a practice from the first visit.
A tale of two pipelines
The report also offers the first look at kitten and puppy visits for the fiscal year that began in July. The gap between the two is wide.
Kitten visits from July through September dipped 0.9% compared with the same months of 2025.1 Even so, the kitten numbers remain on track to finish the year about 11% above the 2018-2019 baseline, before the COVID-19 pandemic. If the pace holds, kitten visits would top that baseline for the seventh straight year.
Puppy visits fell 10% from July through September and are on pace to finish 44% below the baseline.1
The council explains why a shrinking puppy class matters well beyond puppyhood. Every dog stays in the population for life, so a lean year for puppies leaves a smaller group of dogs that ages through every later year, producing fewer visits at each stage. A rebound in adoptions down the road brings in bigger groups of young dogs without enlarging the lean years.1 The cohort effect underpins a scenario laid out in the second edition of Puppocalypse, Kitten Craze and the Expectations Reset, in which combined dog and cat clinical visits decline 1% to 2% a year over the next decade.
The kitten in the room
Kittens give practices a dependable source of new feline patients. Holding on to those patients is the harder part.
“Kitten visits have stayed above pre-Covid levels for six straight years, so practices are seeing a steady stream of new feline patients,” Gina Fortunato, executive director of CATalyst Council, said in the release.1 “The real question is how many of those kittens are still coming in as they age.”
The release points practices to a free resource, “The Kitten in the Room,” by Fortunato and Kristin Wuhrman, CCBC, chair of CATalyst Council.2 In it, Wuhrman and Fortunato argue that many cats never get connected to a veterinarian at all. Where a cat comes from does more than anything else to determine whether it ever gets veterinary care, according to council data cited in the article. The 2026 State of the Cat household survey found that 62% of cats arrive through informal channels, such as a found stray, a litter born in the garage or a coworker rehoming a cat. Those cats often come home without the veterinary handoff that breeders and shelters frequently build in for dogs.2
Expectations about vaccines also factor in. Many owners treat the kitten shots as the main reason to see a veterinarian, according to the article.2 Once the series is done, some assume the cat is covered and skip the clinic until a problem shows up.
Turning a kitten visit into a lifelong patient
In the article’s view, the kitten series is the moment to change how owners think about feline care. Its 8 recommended actions lean more on how teams talk with clients than on changes to the medicine itself.2
As the article puts it, every new kitten “is a potential 15-year patient relationship or a one-time visitor.”2
References
- CATalyst Council reports cat clinical visits grow 2.7 percent as U.S. veterinary clinical visits fall 1.9 percent. News release. CATalyst Council. October 13, 2026. Accessed October 23, 2026. https://catalystcouncil.org/catalyst-council-reports-cat-clinical-visits-grow-2-7-percent-as-u-s-veterinary-clinical-visits-fall-1-9-percent/
- Wuhrman K, Fortunato G. The kitten in the room: turning kitten season into lifelong feline care. CATalyst Council. Accessed October 23, 2026. https://catalystcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/CL-003-Catalyst_The-Kitten-in-the-Room_article_Final.pdf
