Perioperative pain management in cats has advanced significantly, and multimodal analgesic protocols prevent the undertreatment of post-surgical pain that was historically widespread.
Post-operative pain in cats was systematically undertreated for decades due to concerns about drug toxicity, difficulty assessing feline pain, and owner inability to administer effective analgesia at home. Modern perioperative protocols address all three barriers: validated pain assessment tools make pain monitoring accessible to all clinical staff and trained owners, oral transmucosal buprenorphine provides effective home analgesia, and intraoperative local anesthetic techniques reduce baseline analgesic requirements. The welfare improvement from modern multimodal perioperative protocols compared to historical practices is substantial. Clinics that have implemented these protocols report shorter recovery times and faster return to normal behavior in surgical patients.