Advanced dental disease in cats causes significant chronic pain that is often unrecognized and undertreated, making dental welfare one of the most important aspects of feline preventive care.
Dental pain in cats represents one of the most widespread and most consistently overlooked welfare problems in companion animal medicine. A cat with multiple tooth resorption lesions may have been experiencing pain equivalent to exposed dental nerve tissue — one of the most severe acute pains known — for months or years, while continuing to eat modified-texture food and behaving largely normally to casual observation. The welfare gap between the suffering caused by dental disease and the treatment rate is enormous. Routine dental examination and proactive treatment is one of the highest-impact welfare interventions available for domestic cats.