Month: February 2025

‘Cats are an oddity’, says Dr Emily Blackwell, who should know: she’s Senior Lecturer in Animal Behaviour and Welfare at Bristol Veterinary School and Director of the Bristol Cats Study. Dr Blackwell discusses matters canine and (mostly) feline, and how her work can sometimes require skills associated with a certain fictional Victorian detective. She begins with two ‘career origin stories’, in the interests of balance: a dog one and a cat one.  

When I was a child, our school playing fields backed onto our garden and I used to hear my dog howling sometimes if Mum had gone out and left her at home. At the time, I didn’t know that dogs could have separation issues, but it got me interested in the different ways our pets behave, especially ways that make life uncomfortable – both for us and for them. 

My grandma had a rescue cat called Rusty who would hide under the bed, and if you had bare feet, she would come out and attack them. My brother and I were desperate to stroke her and play with her, but she was just too frightened. Feeling sympathy for Rusty probably sparked my interest in cats and their psychological needs.  

When I started my research into companion animal behaviour and welfare, it was mainly with dogs, because the Dogs Trust funded my first lectureship. Then about seven years ago I began managing the Bristol Cats Study. I don’t have much time for clinical work these days, but in my spare time I treat pets with various behaviour problems, and I teach on our veterinary and vet nursing courses.    

Kittens of the 2010s 

The Bristol Cats Study is ‘the cat version of Children of the 90s’. It was set up in 2010 on a shoestring, then Cats Protection started funding it, and now we also have funding from Waltham Petcare Science Institute. We recruited kittens aged between eight and 16 weeks – 2,400 of them in the end, quite impressive before social media was a thing – and we have just under a thousand left, which isn’t bad. Some, sadly, have died, others’ owners have dropped out of the study or moved. 

Everyone involved in the cat world always says that cat owners go above and beyond, so if you’re interviewing a cat owner, allow double the amount of time you would a dog owner. But they’re amazing – without them we couldn’t do the study.  

Bristol Cats has had a direct impact on policy: for instance, Cats Protection want to find out whether early neutering impacts upon a range of health issues, including obesity, and the results of that study will be published soon. Also, we’ve characterised the feline gut microbiome for the first time, and two papers on that are due this year.  

Sanity claws 

Cats are an oddity. Their ancestral species is the African Wildcat, which is solitary, but through domestication they’ve developed an ability to form social groups. Pet cats can live relatively harmoniously, providing they’ve got the right household environment and resources, but there are things that owners might not notice – for example, that one cat might be sitting staring in a doorway and blocking the other cat’s access. 

The biggest cause of stress for pet cats is probably other cats. We usually do home visits for cat behaviour problems, and we ask questions about how they interact or react to different things: how do they react to strangers, to familiar people, to dogs in the household? Do other cats stare at them through the window? My favourite thing about being a clinician is that you’re a bit of a Sherlock Holmes, looking for clues and trying to work out how certain behaviour has developed, and how we can unpick that.

If you’re leading an observational study rather than doing clinical work, it can be a little frustrating: you’re observing what happens in the natural time course of the cats, and it’s really important that you don’t intervene. Owners will often say ‘There’s something going on between our cats’, and I’ll be longing to get in there and work it out. Obviously, if there’s a serious problem, we’ll direct them to an appropriate place, but we have to refrain from stepping in. 

Moving furward  

I’ve done quite a lot of TV work, which has been fantastic: I can see clients one-on-one in the clinic, which is really rewarding, but I can only see so many, whereas the first programme that I did – for a Channel 4 series called Dogs: Their Secret Lives – had two million viewers, and I had a full inbox the next day. A bit overwhelming, but it really opened my eyes to the impact you can have as an expert by working with the media.  

Anyone can call themselves a behaviourist, but I’ve spent most of my career trying to establish recognised ‘gold standard’ qualifications, and now our Veterinary Nursing degree is accredited with a professional body for clinical animal behaviourists. I sit on the committee for that organisation and help to set standards, which has been really gratifying. 

With Bristol Cats, what we want to do next is follow kittens from birth. That’s trickier, but early-life environment is critical to later behaviour. We also plan to look at rescue cats that are rehomed: what makes for a successful rehoming, and if it goes wrong, why? I’m quite excited about that side of things.  

As the University announces that it is taking the first steps towards opening a second micro-campus in Hartcliffe, Tara Miran, Civic Engagement Manager for the University’s Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus (TQEC), traces her path to this point, reflects on her drive to connect people, and looks to the future as she takes on the management of the University’s Barton Hill micro-campus. 

In a way, what has fuelled my desire to work in community engagement is my heritage. I’m Kurdish but I grew up in London, so I also identify as a Londoner and as a Bristolian.  

Kurdistan’s history over the last 100 years has seen war, displacement, genocide, civil unrest and colonisation. It’s now divided into four areas of land between different countries, and South Kurdistan, where I’m from, is the only one with an established Kurdish regional government (KRG), following elections in 1992. The Kurdish people’s ongoing struggle for fairness and justice drives me in a lot of what I do.  

I worked in the Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector, then I went into Community Development at Bristol City Council. I worked with great grassroots initiatives that communities of the global majority and equalities groups are driving across our city, and I was able to serve as a bridge between these groups and the Council. I’d conducted some research for Bristol Women’s Voice and the Women’s Commission, interviewing women from the global majority who live around Temple Quarter about the barriers they faced to their career aspirations. In the process, I met Vanessa Kisuule, a city poet who was commissioning some poems for the Temple Quarter project, and she invited me to write one – which I did. So when this civic engagement post came up at the University, it had my name all over it.  

Community, family – and dentistry 

Lots of communities around the world can’t speak up for justice or fairness. I think that if I have the privilege and the ability to effect positive change, then I should be doing it. When it feels like the right thing to do, it doesn’t always feel like ‘hard work’, but there are the days and the nights where you’re physically tired and frustrated. That’s why it’s important to remain persistent and hopeful. 

Everyone should have access to basic services, like a dentist. When we were campaigning to save the St Paul’s Dental Practice, sometimes it was just me and my children handing out flyers or having conversations with local people. I would tell myself “Carry on, there’s going to be a light at the end”. Eventually, I’d get phone calls from media outlets, asking for an interview, and The Bristol Cable supported us all along. Gradually, like-minded people joined the campaign; when people also start giving back good energy and contributions, it fuels you to carry on. Community action is powerful and magical.   

I always have a group of people around me with similar passions and energy. And I have to give credit to my family: my children are always up for a good cause, and my husband is like my backbone. But people like me who are sometimes called ‘activists’ don’t want to always be campaigning for basic provision and services for our communities; we want to enjoy life. That’s why it’s important that we work effectively together to bring about positive change.  

Bristol bridges 

Coming into this job supporting civic engagement around Temple Quarter, I wanted to be a bridge between diverse local communities and the University, and a catalyst for meaningful conversations. Some communities are referred to as those of multiple deprivation, but they are also full of diverse, rich assets and possibilities! I’d like to think that people know me as someone who gets things done, who’s authentic, who is of these communities. I’m visibly a Muslim woman, and I’m in a minority in many places, including at the University, so representation and inclusion are very important to me.  

Now that I also manage Barton Hill micro-campus, working with the Civic Engagement team, we can continue the great things that have been going on there. I’ve got quite a wide network because of my previous work within Bristol – it’s like a directory in my head – so I’m keen to see how I can further enrich and contribute to the micro-campus’s journey.  

We’re also using everything we’ve done at Barton Hill and engaging with our civic partners and networks to think about how we’re creating the civic spaces at TQEC. How do we make them inclusive, so that there’s equity of use for city partners, equalities groups, staff and students when the campus opens in September 2026?   

One of the things I’m looking forward to seeing come to fruition on the Temple Quarter campus is the Story Exchange. This is a place for curating conversations between people with very different perspectives and experiences. It’s designed as a circle, so all perspectives are equal. We do this in different cultures across the world and throughout history– sitting in circles, sharing challenges, working on things together.

This is the focus of one of our current participatory art commissions, Charting Change.  I’m very excited to see how that all develops and how civic engagement will look and feel in TQEC.