Cats metabolise drugs differently from dogs and humans, creating unique challenges and opportunities in feline pain pharmacology.
Feline pain management has long lagged behind canine and human medicine due to the metabolic peculiarities of cats and historical underestimation of feline pain. The discovery of the oral transmucosal buprenorphine route transformed perioperative pain management by enabling outpatient owners to administer effective analgesia without injection. The recent approval of frunevetmab (an anti-NGF monoclonal antibody) for feline osteoarthritis pain represents a major advance — it provides sustained analgesia without the renal risks of NSAIDs, which are critical for older cats often already experiencing chronic kidney disease. Multimodal analgesia combining different drug classes at lower individual doses is now the gold standard for cats with significant pain, minimising adverse effects while maximising pain relief.