Veterinary clinic visit volume has been declining for five consecutive years. A new report from the CATalyst Council suggests that trend is not a blip. It is baked into the demographics, and practices that plan for a quick rebound may be in for a rough decade.
The report, titled "Puppocalpyse, Kitten Craze and the Expectations Reset," identifies a clear culprit: new puppy visits have fallen to 62% of their 2018/2019 baseline, driven down every year since the COVID-era adoption boom. Because those first-year puppy visits establish the long-term visit cadence for each birth-year cohort, the impact compounds. Fewer puppies entering the system today means fewer adult dogs coming in for wellness, sick visits, and preventive care for the next 13 to 14 years.
For practice leaders who have been waiting for the market to correct itself, this report is a signal to stop waiting and start adapting.
Why Puppy Visits Dropped and Why It Matters
The CATalyst Council report points to two likely contributors to the puppy visit decline. First, veterinary service inflation has outpaced general consumer inflation since the pandemic, making care less affordable for younger pet owners who adopted during the boom. Second, rising single-family home prices may have made dog ownership itself less attainable for that same demographic.
The result is that four consecutive below-baseline puppy cohorts are now working their way through the system. Every year those dogs age without a full vaccine and wellness history, the suppressive effect on visit volume deepens. This is not a problem practices can market their way out of with one campaign. The underlying population of dogs receiving regular veterinary care is simply smaller than it was, and it will remain that way for years.
The feline side of the picture is notably different. Kitten visits are running 8% to 10% above pre-pandemic levels and have held steady for four years. That growth has not been enough to offset the canine decline, because cats account for less than one-third of total veterinary visits. But it does point to where opportunity lives.
As Gina Fortunato, executive director of the CATalyst Council, puts it:
Closing the Access Gap Is Where the Growth Is
A flat visit environment signals that the traditional model, waiting for clients to book, is costing practices care and revenue both. The pet owners who stopped coming in after the pandemic did not stop loving their animals. Many of them ran into barriers: cost, logistics, the stress of transporting a cat who hates the carrier, or simply the friction of getting an appointment in an overbooked schedule.
Growth for most practices is going to come from closing that gap. The CATalyst Council data points specifically to feline visits as the one segment running above pre-pandemic levels, and it is not hard to see why: cat owners are motivated, but cats are notoriously difficult to bring in. Research published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science found cats examined at home showed significantly lower stress than those seen in a clinic. Lower stress means better compliance, better diagnostics, and clients who are more likely to follow through on care.
The practices positioned to grow through this decade are the ones expanding their definition of where care happens. In-home, vet-directed technician visits for post-op rechecks, chronic disease monitoring, and senior pet assessments can reach exactly the clients the CATalyst Council says are drifting away: cost-sensitive, access-limited, or simply burned out on the logistics of clinic visits. For cats especially, home-based care is not a convenience add-on. It is often the only context in which the animal can be meaningfully assessed.
Feline-friendly certification, lower-stress handling protocols, and outreach to lapsed cat owners are concrete growth levers. Pairing those with in-home service options extends that reach further.
The data doesn't support a rebound strategy. The more durable approach is to build the model around flat visit volume through at least 2030, and to treat Fear-Free and cat-friendly certification, feline-specific appointment blocks, and proactive outreach to lapsed cat owners as the clearest organic growth opportunity currently on the table.
Extending that reach with in-home, vet-directed technician visits for post-op rechecks, chronic disease monitoring, and senior pet check-ins brings in clients who are not making it back to the clinic on their own, on top of the volume a practice already has rather than instead of it. Reducing friction for the clients already on the books, through flexible scheduling, telemedicine triage, and in-home options, matters just as much: it is often the difference between a relationship that quietly lapses and one that turns into consistent, recurring care.
Vet med has navigated hard cycles before. The profession is full of people who find a way through. This one just requires reading the data honestly and building toward pet owners where they actually are.