Chronic pain in cats is systematically under-recognised and under-treated because cats suppress behavioural signs of pain as a survival strategy, making owner education and veterinary vigilance essential for good welfare.
Chronic pain in cats causes a silent reduction in quality of life that owners frequently miss or attribute to normal aging. A cat that has stopped grooming, avoids jumping, eats less enthusiastically, or has become less interactive may be in significant chronic discomfort. The absence of vocalisation does not mean the absence of pain — it means the cat is responding to pain in a species-typical way. Validated pain assessment tools allow veterinary teams to quantify feline pain objectively. Effective multimodal pain management dramatically improves daily welfare in senior cats, often restoring social engagement and activity levels that owners had accepted as lost to age.