We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ingrid Johnson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ingrid below.

Ingrid, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

I hope that I am remembered for having helped a lot of animals, cats specifically. I hope that I changed some perspectives along the way, opened some minds, and made a difference for pets and their humans.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers?

As a lifelong animal advocate, I had always dreamed of a career helping animals, but initially took a different path and went to art school. I did well in school but felt unfulfilled. I rescued a cat, Zinnia, and took her to my feline exclusive veterinarian at the time and was offered a job as a vet tech! The timing coincided with my college graduation so you can imagine my parents’ delight! The rest is history, I never looked back. Zinnia became our fifth cat at the time (and we had one dog then too), as you might have guessed the family also grew with this career change.

While I loved veterinary medicine, I always had more of an interest in why cats do the things they do versus medicine. I gradually became more and more involved in cat behavior. I attended many veterinary continuing education conferences to further my knowledge but being saturated in cats all day (and dogs-I am not a speciesist!) you learn a thing or two from observation and of course out of sheer necessity! My passion for feline behavior grew as did my realization that there were very few qualified professionals out there helping cats. I obtained my certification from the IAABC (the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants) and I started Fundamentally Feline, my own cat behavior consulting business.

Fundamentally Feline (FF) morphed into much more than just behavior consulting. Before we knew it, my husband, Jake and I were making our own line of products to fill a gap in the market where cat’s needs were just not being met. We make 100% sisal scratching products including scratching posts, pads, ramps and even a balance beam for agility training! Yes, cats are quite trainable, we even have a few who ride a skateboard! Jake also designs and installs hand-made, custom built vertical space. You can check out all of the private, custom, home installations on our website and our pieces are now also available for retail purchase and DIY install! I also make my own line of feline foraging toys (a.k.a. food puzzles) and offer a litter box cutting service to help people have the best litter boxes for their cats. During Covid we expanded our consulting services to try to help as many families remotely as possible. I now offer medicating consultations to help clients learn how to medicate their cats in a stress-free manner. Jake now offers vertical space design consults with no commitment to purchase our pieces, we are simply offering design and layout help to ensure that all cats in the home get the most of out the vertical space set up. There is a science to it! Lastly, I have an incredibly extensive You Tube channel loaded with tons of educational videos on many topics!

Since Covid, live lecturing at veterinary conferences has ceased, but looks like it is making a comeback! I continue to offer webinars on a variety of topics including environmental enrichment, litter box maximization, medicating tips and techniques, feline foraging toys and more. I was fortunate enough to co-author a paper that was published in the Fall of 2016 in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery (JFMS) entitled “Food puzzles for cats: feeding for physical and emotional wellbeing”. It remains one of the most widely cited and downloaded articles in the history of the journal! Allowing cats the enrichment of working for their food is likely my most passionate topic within the realm of feline behavior. To complement this paper a colleague and I created a website called foodpuzzlesforcats.com.

I am also co-director of Paw Project-Georgia, The Paw Project is an organization working towards ending the cruel practice of declawing cats. Declawing is amputation. It is arguably the most painful procedure in veterinary medicine, illegal in 32 other countries, even punishable by loss of veterinary license in some, yet we Americans find more value in our area rugs than we do in preserving the integrity and majestic beauty of the cat’s physical and emotional wellbeing. I am proudly the Hospital Manager (vet tech, groomer and behaviorist) for Paws Whiskers and Claws, the Feline Hospital, one of the VERY FEW practices in the state of Georgia that refuses to perform this barbaric procedure. This is also one of the reasons we make our scratching posts, the commercial market is saturated with terrible scratching products that do not meet a cat’s needs, which results in cats getting declawed because their owners think they have no alternative. I am here to tell you I have not one piece of scratched up furniture, even with double digits of cats! We are making strides, however, the states of New York and Maryland have recently banned the procedure and made it illegal to perform.

I currently share my home with my husband Jake, and four amazing rescue cats, Hitch, Soren, Finn and Tonka. Thus far, we have welcomed 28 cats and five dogs to cross our threshold into their forever home and haven’t bought a single one of them. Please don’t shop, ADOPT until there are none being killed in shelters! You can read about all of those who have inspired my journey by visiting the “Muses” page on my website. Their stories are amazing, bring tissues!

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

When I helped to open Paws Whiskers and Claws, we knew we would be a no-declaw facility. We felt that we had to bring solutions to our clients. We couldn’t just tell them that we would not declaw their cat and to have a good day, they would just go to the clinic down the street and have it done. So, we offer nail trims at no charge, education, and the best scratching posts in town! This gradually grew into the products you see on our website today. Clients would make requests, or a need would arise, and this gradually turned into a whole line of products.

The same is true for the litter box cutting service I provide. The market is saturated with boxes that do not meet a cat’s behavioral needs, so I started helping my clients achieve the recommendations I made to them during the behavior consult, by offering this service. I eventually became so busy consulting I decided to make a DIY video to show how I do it. I still cut plenty of boxes, but fewer now which allows me to focus on other things.

The foraging, that has a sadder story for another interview, but after our home caught fire and we downsized to a small space, I started feeding our cats exclusively via foraging toys. There was virtually nothing to buy, so I started to make my own line of those as well! The market has since exploded with food puzzles, but my toys are still very popular, so I keep at it! For readers interested, visit the Muses page of my website and read all about Vader, who saved our house from burning down.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

It truly happens organically and mostly by word of mouth. I do not advertise, one day I might, but at the moment I can barely keep up and this is supposed to be a “side gig” that has morphed into a full-time job. I just take it as it comes and welcome the lulls when I have them. I get clients through the clinic and through social media, but I think most are courtesy of good ole Google!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fundamentallyfeline.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundamentallyfeline/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FundamentallyFeline/?ref=settings
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/FundmntlyFeline
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBCda8tFy9ANB9eLMLiRPsA
• Other: foodpuzzlesforcats.com