Dental disease affects the majority of cats over three years of age, causing chronic oral pain that significantly impairs quality of life and is often severely undertreated due to poor owner recognition.
Chronic dental pain in cats is widespread, poorly recognized, and dramatically undertreated. The stoic nature of cats means that even severe dental pain manifests as subtle behavioral changes — eating only on one side, dropping food, reducing grooming — rather than the obvious distress that would prompt immediate owner action. Cats habituate to chronic pain and continue functioning in ways that mask suffering from owners. The result is that many cats endure months or years of dental pain without treatment. Dental treatment — usually involving extractions of diseased teeth — produces remarkable behavioral improvements in affected cats, with owners frequently reporting dramatic increases in activity, playfulness, and social interaction following treatment. The transformation demonstrates the severity of the pre-treatment suffering that was normalized.