Feline-specific analgesic pharmacology enables tailored perioperative pain management that avoids the toxicity risks of inappropriate drug use in cats.
Feline perioperative pain management welfare advances require species-specific knowledge that continues to grow. The historical undertreatment of post-surgical cat pain reflected both inadequate recognition tools and limited safe analgesic options. Validated feline grimace scales now enable assessment, and an expanding formulary of feline-appropriate analgesics enables treatment. The multimodal approach — combining drugs from different mechanistic classes to achieve additive analgesia at lower individual doses — reduces both pain and toxicity risk. Veterinary practices that maintain current feline analgesia knowledge through continuing education and implement structured post-operative pain protocols provide substantially better welfare outcomes than those relying on historical practices that may underestimate feline pain or use inappropriate drugs.