Caregiver burden in cat owners: a cross-sectional observational study

Caregiver burden has been found in owners of seriously ill pets; however, research to date has been heavily represented by dog owners. Prior caregiver burden work has neither intentionally focused on cat owners nor been appropriately powered to examine differences in owners of cats relative to owners of dogs. We expected that owners of an ill cat would exhibit greater caregiver burden than owners of a healthy cat but lower burden than owners of an ill dog.

A cross-sectional online assessment of caregiver burden was completed by 1085 pet owners through a pet demographic audience platform, including 333 owners reporting on a cat with current illness, 492 owners of a healthy cat and 260 owners of dogs with a current illness.

Owners of an ill cat, examined across all illnesses represented, had greater burden (P <0.001) than the owners of a healthy cat and somewhat lower burden (P = 0.013) than owners of an ill dog.

Caregiver burden is present in owners of an ill cat and may differ from that of dog owners. Future work is needed to determine the reasons underlying this difference between species. Given that restricted sample sizes precluded examination across specific conditions, it will also be important to determine whether particular diseases yield greater burden in cat owners relative to dog owners.