Evidence-based tools for assessing pain in cats and how their use improves veterinary welfare outcomes.
Validated cat pain assessment tools represent a significant welfare advance that is still being implemented unevenly across veterinary practice. The historical undertreatment of pain in cats — rooted in false beliefs that cats feel pain less intensely than dogs — has caused preventable suffering for patients whose distress was invisible to clinicians relying on subjective impression. The Feline Grimace Scale provides an objective, validated, quick assessment that removes subjectivity and implicit bias from pain evaluation. Pain assessment tools change the welfare equation by making pain visible and quantifiable — a cat scoring highly on the FGS is communicating pain in a language that the tool translates for clinicians. Widespread adoption in veterinary education, practice, and continuing professional development would improve the welfare of millions of cats receiving veterinary care annually.