People with Disabilities & SD Awareness

Can a cat be trained as a medical alert service animal?

Hi D Cook,

First welcome to the forum. Nice to meet you. I'm sure you will enjoy it here.

Now to answer your question about cats. Yes cats can indeed be trained as an medical alert animals. Just like dogs it depends on the cat and whether or not they are in tune as it were to the medical needs. Several people have service cats in which can detect when their partner stops breathing. They would smack the face or some part of the body or lick the face to alert. One person even trained their cat to actually reset their breathing equipment when it shuts down then wakes her up. In training cats my suggestion would be to make sure you use the clicker as your tool.

Do you have a cat now? If so does your cat respond to your needs? Such as low sugar and say the cat starts licking or something that's not usual per say.

I am a disabilities coordinator at a private college and a student is on campus stating her 4 month old kitten is a trained service animal. I am attempting to determine if this can actually be a service animal that is "individually trained to do work or perform tasks" per the definition in CFR 28 36.104 or is the kitten an emotional support animal. The student states she suffers "seizures" however her medical documentation classifies these as disassociative episodes and "zoning out". I doesn't seem possible to me that a 4 month old kitten can be specifically trained to alert the student to non-epileptic, non-diabetic, type activity. She suffers from psychiatric issues with panic attacks, stress, anxiety, depression non-epileptic, non-diabetic in nature. I'm not stating she doesn't qualify for a disability, but not sure the kitten is an actual service animal versus an emotional support animal.

The first thing I would do is to double check with your state and local laws. Make sure they do not have a subsection that allows: 1. Service animals in training, and or 2. Emotional Support animals. There are several states that has these two previsions. Right now Utah has such a state law but they are changing that though I believe it's not in effect yet. I haven't heard anything more on it to know fore-sure. If so then your dilemma would be over because they too would be covered by law. Not Federal but State.

However if your local or state doesn't have such section then I would say this is definitely a fine line here because there are Psychiatric Service Animals. Mainly dogs but cats are used as well. These animals are trained to respond to their partners panic attacks. If their partner basically zones out then these animals would bring them around. This could be by tugging on their clothing, nipping at their hand or licking their face/body. Just to name a few tasks. They also could bring meds. Whatever would be best for their partner.

With that said the hard part is actually knowing whether or not this is a true service kitten or only an emotional support animal. So many individuals gets the two confused and there are so much misinformation out there. The Dr.'s don't always have a clue when they give out prescriptions on having a *service animal*. Many are actually ESA and not true service animals. This adds to the confusion because people are under the assumption that their *ESA* is a service animal. Adding to the confusion are the two laws FHA and the Air Carrier Act. As they add ESA into being a Service Animal. Example of this is what NYC has been having lately. Where people going into restaurants claiming their ESA are service animals. It's not that they are trying to pull the wool over anybodies eyes it's just that they are confused about the differences of the two and with all the gray lines within the laws it's hard to know which laws covers what.

By the ADA law you can only ask two questions which the first you know as a disability coordinator. She is a qualified person with a disability. The second is whether or not the 4 month kitten is a service animal. All you are allowed to ask is "Is this a service animal for your disability needs?". If she states yes. Then not really too much one could do except that if the animal in question is acting up, threatening others (real threat) then you have the legal right to have the said animal removed.

Before you were allowed to ask "What Tasks does your service animal perform?. The only problem with this question which is why the DOJ took it out was the fact that it would divulge the individuals disabilities. Though many people still ask this question. You may try asking this question and see if she would tell you but you wouldn't be able to force the issue. She also could just say helps me with my various disabilities or use she is a medical service animal which is general. And that was allowed too. Although you already know what her disabilities are so therefore you may be able to ask such a question. This may help you know if the kitten is a emotional support animal or not.

Unfortunately this is a catch 22 for you, because you have to watch what you ask so you are not violating the individuals right to be accompanied by a *individually trained* service animal. You cannot insist on seeing ID or Certification Papers as one doesn't need such. One of the reasoning for this is because service animals do not have legal rights. People with disabilities do. With papers comes the fact that anybody could be walking the SA and would be allowed to go into place of business with those papers.

Personally I would not think that a 4 month kitten would have all the qualifications in task and basic training to be reliable. Although I don't work with cats / kittens to really know fore-sure. You may have to allow the individuals kitten in but you will have the legal right if the kitten is destructive and or threatening in any way.


Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer nor do I claim to be such so this information is not in anyway considered as legal advice.