Safe sedation and anaesthesia for cats requires understanding feline-specific physiology and using protocols that minimise risk and provide excellent pain management.
Anaesthetic safety in cats has improved dramatically with feline-specific protocols, better monitoring equipment and pre-anaesthetic assessment. However, anaesthetic risk remains real, particularly in geriatric cats with concurrent disease. Pre-anaesthetic health assessment, feline-appropriate drug protocols, attentive monitoring and excellent recovery care minimise risk while ensuring procedures can be performed to improve welfare.