How do You Know If Your Cat Is In Pain?

Here’s how you can now tell if cat is in pain from his facial expressions.

- Patricia E Tan

Pain management is frequently overlooked in cats when compared with dogs. This is due to feline pain recognition and assessment challenges, lack of specific training, and limited availability of pain assessment scoring tools.

Now there is a ‘Feline Grimace Scale’ to determine if a cat is in pain.

Using videos of painful and non-painful cats mostly of client-owned cats presented to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Université de Montréal, the cats were evaluated and given pain killers if they were found to be painful. None of the manipulations induced pain or harm to the cats.

The Feline Grimace Scale has shown to be a valid, reliable, fast and simple acute pain assessment in cats.

To use the Scale, pet owners should observe the cat undisturbed for 30 seconds and then score. Each action unit is individually evaluated and scored as ‘0’ (action unit is absent), ‘1’ (action unit is moderately present or there is uncertainty over its presence) or ‘2’ (action unit is obviously present).

The following movements determine whether a cat is in pain:

• The ears will rotate back and flatten down.