You know what pain feels like, but do you know how that feeling is transmitted within your body? Did you know that besides being unpleasant, pain causes negative physical and mental effects on the body? This is true for both humans and cats. Cats feel pain just as we do, but they express it differently.
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Prolonged, untreated pain can cause metabolic and endocrine changes that negatively affect the body’s systems and organs. Pain can slow down healing and recovery from a traumatic injury or event, and it can cause even further stress to a cat beyond the traumatic event itself.
This occurs whether the pain has been caused by a surgical procedure, a traumatic event like being hit by a car, a sudden (acute) or long-standing (chronic) inflammatory condition, neurologic pain, and more.
Pain is typically categorized as either:
Here is a more scientific, detailed explanation of what pain is.
Since cats can’t tell us about their pain, where it is, how long it’s been going on, how severe it is, and other descriptive information to further characterize it, several scoring systems and pain management guidelines have been created to help determine how a cat is feeling. Here are just a few of them:
During a veterinary exam, painful cats may also have a faster than normal heart rate, a higher than normal body temperature, a faster than normal breathing rate, and an increased effort to breathe.
Your vet may want to check bloodwork, x-rays, or even advise advanced imaging such as abdominal or heart ultrasound, or CT or MRI depending on the condition. If your cat is in a lot of pain, this may require an injectable sedative and pain control medications to be administered by your vet. This is to reduce pain and stress in your cat (imagine having your leg x-rayed when it’s broken and any small movement makes you want to scream!)
Treatment depends on the condition. It may consist of:
How to Examine Your Pet at Home: A Step-By-Step Guide
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