Cats are skilled at masking pain, making chronic pain recognition one of the most significant challenges in feline veterinary practice. Improved recognition tools are transforming welfare outcomes for painful cats.
Chronic pain in cats causes sustained welfare compromise that frequently goes unrecognised and untreated for months to years. The stoic masking of pain that serves cats well as prey animals in the wild means that owners and veterinarians routinely underestimate the pain burden of conditions like osteoarthritis. Cats that are less active, groom less thoroughly or interact differently with family members are often assumed to have simply become more sedate with age. When pain is correctly recognised and treated, the improvement in activity, social engagement and exploratory behaviour is often dramatic, retrospectively revealing the scale of the welfare compromise that had been accepted as normal ageing.