The 2024 AAFP Intercat Tension Guidelines: Recognition, Prevention, and Management (published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery) were written by a Task Force of board-certified behaviorists and feline-medicine clinicians. Their purpose is recognizing intercat tension, preventing or minimizing its occurrence, and managing stressors in households with more than one cat.
The guidelines adapt the five pillars of a healthy feline environment into a framework for preventing or managing tension, and stress that Intercat tension can occur even in two-cat households, most often when introducing a new cat into the home. They provide practical tools such as a multi-cat home profile questionnaire, a behavior-modification handout, and a step-by-step approach to introducing a new cat to resident cats, plus case studies and a psychotherapeutic-medication table.
Pet-food relevance: intercat tension is a welfare/stress issue that overlaps with the cat-friendly-environment and behavior topics in this category; chronic stress can affect appetite and feeding behavior. Written in paraphrase mode (AAFP/SAGE copyrighted); exact guideline title, the recognition framing, and the five-pillars adaptation are anchored verbatim.
Claims (verified C1 substrings of source_file — paraphrase mode)
2024 AAFP Intercat Tension Guidelines: Recognition, Prevention, and Managementrecognizing intercat tension, preventing or minimizing its occurrence, and managing stressorsmodified the five pillars of a healthy feline environment to provide a framework to assist in the prevention or management of intercat tension in households with two or more catsIntercat tension can occur even in two-cat households, and most frequently occurs when introducing a new cat into the home