About Me
I trained under Professor Peter Neville and the Directors of COAPE, and hold an Advanced Diploma in Companion Animal Behaviour and Training, being a behaviour practitioner with the organisation. I specialise in cat behaviour, from pets to breeding queens and studs, and also undertake behaviour work and training with dogs, and occasionally other pets.
The CAPBT represents a membership base of 200+ specifically qualified behaviourists for referral of pet behaviour and training problems. Visit www.capbt.org to find out more about the Association
I have always loved animals and grew up with a variety of them, although as a child I didn’t even think of the behavioural aspects. We lived in a small village and kept dogs, rabbits, fish and gerbils! I was also used to being around horses, cows, and sheep, but it wasn’t until I met my husband that I truly discovered cats.
The only experience I had of cats was an enormous ginger tom that used to roam around the area, hiss a lot and generally terrorise me when I was around 5 years old (well it looked that way to a 5 year old)!
When I was 21 I met my husband and lived with him and his family whilst he finished his University degree. Along with his mum, dad and sister, there was a cat called Loopy. Loopy knew right from the start that I was terrified of her and would lie in wait at the top of the stairs whenever I approached them. Eventually we reached an agreement; she wouldn’t terrorise me and I’d be very grateful and let her have a titbit of my dinner!
So it was with some trepidation that I agreed to my husband’s request that we had our own cats when we bought our first house. We eventually found the perfect kittens, and I needn’t have worried, as when we got them home it took me all of five minutes to bond with them.
That was really the start of my interest in taking things further than just looking after animals; I started becoming really interested in knowing how they thought and how we could enrich their lives whilst being as true as we could to their nature and what they as cats found important.
I started reading behaviour books, studied my cats endlessly, and applied some of the things I had learnt. I found the whole subject of behaviour very natural to my way of thinking, and I also found I had some intuition, not just with my own cats, but with other peoples too. It was then that I decided I wanted to work with cats, and looked for a suitable course to take.
© 2010 PetPerfect
