Sophie Adwick
Independent, Horsham, UK

Vera Baumans
Laboratory Animal Science Specialist, Department of Animals, Science and Society, Division Laboratory Animal Science, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands

Culum Brown
Department Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Oliver Burman
School of Life Sciences, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

John Chitty
Anton Vets, Unit 11, Andover, UK

Victoria Cussen
Department of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

Kevin Eatwell
Hospital for Small Animals, Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, Midlothian, UK

Joanna Hedley
Beaumont Sainsbury Animal Hospital, The Royal Veterinary College, London, UK

Andrew C. Highfield
Casa Karma, Almeria, Spain

Bryan Howard
The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

Robert Johnson
Zoologica Consulting, Mosman, Australia

Kirk Klasing
Department of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

Graham Law
College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

Anne McBride
School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

Paul McGreevy
The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Joy Mench
Department of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

Anna Meredith
Hospital for Small Animals, Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh, Midlothian, UK

Siobhan Mullan
Department Clinical Veterinary Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

Rudolf Nager
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

Joanne Paul‐Murphy
School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

Irene Rochlitz
Department of Veterinary Medicine, Centre for Animal Welfare and Anthrozoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Nicola Rooney
Department of Clinical Veterinary Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

Richard Saunders
Bristol Zoological Society Ltd., Clifton, Bristol, UK

Elke Scheibler
School of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science, University of South Wales, Pontypridd, UK

Nico J. Schoemaker
Division of Zoological Medicine
Department of Clinical Sciences of Companion Animals
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Lynne Sneddon
Institute of Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

Kevin Stafford
Institute of Veterinary Animal and Biomedical Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Claudia Vinke
Department of Animals in Science & Society, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Eva Waiblinger
Independent, Ebmatingen, Switzerland

Michael Wilkinson
Biological Services Division, Veterinary Research Facility, Glasgow, UK

David Wolfenden
Blue Planet Aquarium, Longlooms Road, Cheshire Oaks, UK

James Yeates
Cats Protection, Chelwood Gate, Sussex, UK

Yvonne R. A. van Zeeland
Division of Zoological Medicine, Department of Clinical Sciences of Companion Animals, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Humans have kept animals as pets for at least 12 000 years, but possibly for much longer. During this time, most animals were kept for practical reasons as farmed animals for food or as working animals, but we know that pet keeping was widespread in recent hunter‐gatherer societies, suggesting it may well have also occurred in Palaeolithic societies. In other words, many people just seem to like having an animal around. Keeping, feeding, and caring for animals can be a substantial cost, and until recently, it tended to be the better off who kept companion animals. Today, however, the practice is becoming much more widespread, and the number of companion animals throughout the world is increasing dramatically.

The vast majority of those people who keep companion animals do so because they have a love of animals. Most wish to keep them healthy and happy, and indeed, many treat their pet as a member of the family. However, it is all too easy to misunderstand animals’ needs and to make mistakes that result in poor welfare or suffering. Although companion animals may be treated as one of the family, animals are not humans, and their needs are often quite different to those of humans. The fact is, that keeping and caring for animals properly requires knowledge gained through experience, research, or education, and it is not just owners who need this information. Others such as veterinarians, shelter and quarantine staff, and those responsible for setting or enforcing standards all need to understand how to meet companion animals’ needs.

The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW) was founded with the intention of using science to inform our understanding of how to care for and meet the needs of animals and, for many years, UFAW has produced handbooks on the care and management of animals used in research (first edition 1947) and farm animals (first edition 1971). In these ‘handbooks’, which have developed into quite heavy tomes, experts in the field sift and synthesise the available specialist and scientific knowledge to provide authoritative and accessible advice for those at the sharp end who have to make practical decisions on the care of these animals. We were therefore delighted when James Yeates approached us and offered to add to the series by producing a handbook using the same approach for companion animals. Yeates has already written a book for the UFAW/Wiley animal welfare series on Animal Welfare in Veterinary Practice and is eminently qualified to carry out this task, with a well‐established academic interest in ethics and animal welfare.

Yeates has brought together experts from around the world to contribute chapters on a wide range of species and species groups, providing information on their natural history, husbandry and health, and signs of poor welfare. He also addresses the practicalities of euthanasia – a difficult and painful subject for many pet owners and veterinarians – but essential to avoid unnecessary suffering. The chapters also include suggestions for improving the welfare of the species or groups of species, providing some useful ideas for long‐term strategies to improve the welfare of companion species through, for example, education, changes to legislation, or development of better products.

We are extraordinarily grateful to James Yeates and to the chapter authors who have put so much hard work and their expertise into a volume that, we hope, will improve the welfare of millions of animals around the world.

This book aims to be a comprehensive and practical reference for everyone who cares about how we should care for our companion animals. Since 1926, Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW) has improved animal welfare through its publications, which are both robustly informed and engagingly readable. To date, UFAW publications have predominantly focused on farm and laboratory contexts, and the UFAW Farm Animal and Laboratory Animal Handbooks are now illustrious, popular, mainstream references and essential reading for all involved in animal welfare science, policymaking, and practice.

People are now beginning to give more attention to the welfare of companion animals because the animals are an increasingly important part of modern society. Pet keeping appears to be growing in popularity, acceptability, stature, and economic impact in many countries, with an estimated 202 million cats and 171 million dogs worldwide. In many Asian and African countries, pet keeping is only recently growing in popularity, but with limited ‘folk wisdom’ about pets’ needs. In many American and European countries, the popularity of pets has generated multibillion‐dollar industries based on traditional misinformation and pseudo‐scientific fads, and it is only now being realised that owners’ love does not make pets’ lives a utopian ideal and that many welfare compromises are mainstream. Indeed, ignorance may be less dangerous than its progeny, misinformation. In many countries worldwide, there is an increasing awareness that pets (like spouses and children) are not things whose treatment can be considered merely a ‘private’ concern. And in many of the same countries, animal welfare is growing as a societal concern in general. These changes make it essential to critically examine pet keeping and to determine how pet breeding, care, and trade can deliver the best animal welfare outcomes.

Consequently, companion animal welfare is an area of increasing scientific investigation because researchers have begun to reflect and satisfy that need. There is growing international literature on companion animal welfare within veterinary, ethology, and clinical animal behaviour texts, as well as more ‘popular’ guides. At the same time, our most august institutions are turning to companion animal welfare – for example, the relatively new Companion Animals Department in the RSPCA. Therefore, there is a demand for accessible scientific information about companion animal welfare and a supply of such information, but not yet in a form that is scientific and accessible for owners and policymakers. It is that gap that this book aims to bridge.

This created some challenges for the book. It is a book based on science, not mere opinion. So as editor, I’ve tried to keep to the rule that readers are given only facts for which there is convincing supporting evidence (albeit always with the risk of new information challenging those facts) or where doing scientific studies would be inappropriate (either because of the harm to animals or the waste of resources). But guidance on what should be done cannot be solely scientific because guidance relies on expertise. I’ve prevented authors from quoting others’ guidance (i.e. most references are to scientific studies or similar, rather than merely referring to others’ opinions), especially because I’ve chosen some of the most informed and expert scientists on the planet to write for this book. Other good sources of expertise are given in the references section, which can be taken as ‘further reading’. Such scientific information needed to be presented without oversimplification or technical terminology (I have never understood the need for experts to replace everyday words with technical phrases – especially as the latter often just use either the ancient Latin or Greek everyday word or use another English everyday word in an esoteric way). One deliberate exception to the latter is that each chapter uses both the everyday and scientific names of animals and their groups, to serve as a reminder that pets are still animals that evolved most of their biology long before we existed (although, of course, we are animals, too, who share much of that biology). At the same time, the book needed to avoid overly focusing on basic biology or veterinary health issues to cover all welfare issues.

Writing the overarching chapters on biological groups (‘Birds’, ‘Reptiles’, etc.) was a particularly difficult task of providing valuable overviews as a starting point, while recognising the wide variety within each biological group. Readers should note the strong caveat that there can be substantial differences even between closely related species; more specific chapters, then, focus on particular companion animal species (hence, the somewhat esoteric examples used where readers’ own minds will be screaming better examples for more common pets). More generally, readers may be well advised to dip into particular chapters, albeit always with reference to the overarching chapters both overall (Chapters 1 and 22) and for those animals.

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My enormous thanks to all the authors for their time – especially with my less‐than‐subtle timekeeping pressures. All these authors are busy people (part of being so illustrious) and have prioritised this work because of the immense potential influence it can have on improving animals’ lives. In particular, my thanks for the information they gave for the overarching chapters. Specific thanks to the authors, both for their chapters and for their contributions for the overarching chapters (all the interesting bits are from them; all the errors my own). Thanks to the anonymous reviewers and the identifiable ones who assisted various authors: Vera Baumans; Emily Blackwell; John Bradshaw; Rachel Casey; Samantha Gaines; Maggie Jennings; Maeve Moorcroft; Christopher Newman; Anna Olsson; Russell Parker; Clifford Warwick; John Webster; Katie Wonham, and particularly Jane Tyson and Nicola White.

As John Webster said in the foreword for the Farm Handbook: ‘caring about animals is not enough. Caring for them is what matters. This requires compassion, understanding and a great deal of skill.’ With the different (sometimes) human‐animal relationships for companion versus farm animals, this book uses the term care more than management, but both ideas apply equally to each context. This book seeks to promote the best possible care of our companion animals. It provides the most comprehensive, accessible, and up‐to‐date guide available, covering, chapter by chapter, the husbandry and care of all major companion animal species from hamsters to horses to fish to amphibians. The book identifies what their needs are, how we know what their needs are, and gives clear advice how those needs can be met. Overarching chapters also provide fresh understanding of animal welfare science, ethics, and the role of society in ensuring the best possible care of companion animals. Owners also need compassion, temperance, self‐awareness, resources, and knowledge. This book can help with the last.