For close to 20 years, Ceva has been committed to developing innovative products for the prevention and treatment of problem behaviors of dogs and cats.
The use of products such as Feliway® and Adaptil®, based on synthetic versions of naturally occurring pheromones, is now well established to facilitate more harmonious, less stressful relations between people and their pets. Now, Ceva has begun to roll out it latest offering in this range: Feliscratch® is the answer for anyone whose cats like to scratch prized items of furniture or other inappropriate places. And Ceva’s concern for the wellbeing of animals extends beyond the small and domestic to the large and exotic too.
Scratching is part of cats’ natural behaviour and is thought to have a role in communication as well as maintaining claws in good condition. Research suggests that more than 80% of households with cats have problems with scratches on furniture. Feliscratch® by Feliway® contains a copy of the pheromone that cats naturally leave on objects when they scratch plus a small amount of catnip, which cats nd highly attractive. Placed on their scratching posts, Feliscratch® by Feliway® focuses their scratching on the post, saving furniture from unwanted attention and helping cat owners to live in closer harmony with their pets.
Feliway® Classic and Feliway® Friends have been successfully used with a variety of big cats in zoos throughout the world. A recent carefully conducted study on captive lions in Madrid showed that exposure to these products increased the amount of time the lions spent playing and socialising and they were generally more active. The overall conclusion was that these products had a positive e ect on captive lion behaviour and contributed to improved animal welfare.
Since 2008, Ceva has been proud to support a unique initiative which makes pheromones freely available to wildlife conservation programs. The World Wildlife Library of Pheromones and Semiochemicals (WWLPS) was established by the Institute of Research in Semiochemistry and Applied Ethics (IRSEA). IRSEA has worked closely with Ceva over the past 20 years in the development of the company’s growing range of pheromone-based animal behaviour products. And thanks to Ceva’s support, WWLPS has been able to provide pheromones to many projects.
Doctor Patrick Pageat, Director of IRSEA and the inventor of many of Ceva’s behavioural products, explained:
WWLPS started out as a dream but with support from Ceva, our long-term industrial partner, this exciting initiative became a reality in 2008. Since then we have been able to support conservationists working with a wide range of endangered species including lions, tigers, cheetahs, wolves, bears, zebras, elephants and Przewalski’s horse.
One example of WWLPS’s impact was with a 28-year old elephant. Orphaned as a baby and brought up by people, she was nding it difficult to integrate into a captive group and faced the prospect of living out her life in isolation until WWLPS supplied the appropriate pheromone. The use of the pheromone reduced aggression between the group and enabled the previously troubled elephant to enjoy a peaceful, sociable life.
In another example, the use of equine appeasing pheromone has allowed captive bred Przewalski’s horses, which became extinct in the wild in the 1960s, to be successfully reintroduced to their native range in Mongolia. The pheromone reduced stress in the horses during their lengthy journeys from zoos in Europe to Mongolia, enabling them to successfully adapt to their new environments and to re-establish healthy wild populations.