Stories that deserve an extra look
The Puppocalypse, the Kitten Craze, and the great expectations reset
CATalyst Council dropped a report on June 11 that should reset every revenue deck in the industry. Co-authored with Vetsource, Kynetec, and Dedekind Cut Labs, it does one thing very well: it takes the question everyone keeps asking “when do visits come back?” and answers it with cohort math instead of hope.
The answer: not soon, and not the way you’ve been told.
The numbers:
Puppy visits have fallen four straight years, down to 62% of the 2018/19 baseline — a 38% hole. They’re calling it the “Puppocalypse.”
Kitten visits sit 8–10% above baseline and have held there. The “Kitten Craze” is real and durable.
Q1 2026: overall clinical visits down ~1% (IDEXX), with canines off 2.6% and felines up 2.5% (Vetsource). Dogs are 77% of the visit mix, so the dog story wins.
Google searches: “puppy” is ~25% below pre-Covid; “kitten” just hit a 21-year high.
The forecast: combined visit growth of -2.0% to 0.0% through 2030; not the 2–3% the industry keeps penciling in. The base case doesn’t return to growth until ~2030.
Vet service inflation is up 51.4% since Dec 2019 vs. 28.5% CPI and still ran 5.5% YoY this April.
According to the report, the industry has spent four years treating a structural decline like a cyclical dip just waiting for a recovery the demographics won't deliver. The visits aren't paused. A smaller population of dogs is already here. The opportunity isn't in willing the puppies back; it's in the cat clients you're not seeing, the visits you're not converting, and the value per visit you're underplaying. Same owners, different patients.
Intriguing news from outside the veterinary industry
You can’t create 18-year-olds”: higher ed hits its own cohort wall
If the Puppocalypse is demographics-is-destiny in a vet clinic, the college enrollment cliff is the same math in a lecture hall. And it starts this fall.
The setup is almost identical. The babies not born during the 2008 recession are the freshmen not arriving in 2026. Colleges have known the number for 18 years and still mostly planned around a recovery that the birth certificates say isn’t coming.
The numbers:
The 18-year-old population drops about 12% between 2025 and 2030, and may never top 4 million again this century.
The Federal Reserve’s worse scenarios put up to 80 college closures by 2029.
It’s not uniform: elite schools could see 14% more demand by 2029 while small tuition-dependent and community colleges take the hit.
Bloomberg traced it straight to the falling birth rate. One administrator’s line says it all: "You can't create 18-year-olds."
Why you should care
Every industry eventually meets the cohort it didn't get. Higher ed is just hitting its wall a few years ahead of vet med, with the same excuse on the way down: we thought it was cyclical. It wasn't. The lesson isn't to panic about the number you can't change. It's to win a bigger share of the one you've got, and to stop pricing your plans off a generation that was never born.
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