Is something different about your cat’s behavior, but you don’t know if it means something’s wrong?
Well, a new study in the journal PLOS ONE may be able to help as a team of researchers developed a list of 25 signs that indicate your kitty is in pain.
The list was developed by notable academics and clinical experts from around the world with specialties including internal medicine, anesthesiology, oncology, dermatology, and neurology.
“Both owners and veterinarians are clearly able to recognize many behavioral changes in cats which relate to pain,” Daniel Mills, professor of veterinary behavioral medicine at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, said in a news release. “However, owners may not always recognize the clinical relevance of what they see.
“For example, they may view the changes as an inevitable part of natural ageing and not report them to the vet as a concern, or at least not until the behaviors become quite severe,” Mills continued. “We hope that having an agreed list of more objective criteria, which relates to specific signs of pain, could improve the ability of both owners and vets to recognize it.”
The expert panel classified signs in two different ways: ‘sufficient’ and ‘necessary’. Seeing one of the sufficient signs, the experts said, means the cat is in pain – while the necessary signs must be present for pain to even be considered.
The study team used behavior analysis to identify 25 key ‘sufficient’ signs, like not grooming or changes in feeding behavior and difficulty to jump. The team said their results indicate evaluating a set of behaviors will be much more reliable than looking for just one single symptom.
“Throughout the study, we consulted a variety of international experts so that we could be sure the signs were universal indicators of pain,” Mills said. “By creating this core set of signs, we lay the foundation for future studies into the early detection of pain in cats, using scales which are crucially based on natural, non-invasive, observations.”
“Cats are notorious for not showing that they are in pain, and the more that we can find out what the signals are, then the sooner we can get them to the vets for diagnosis and treatment,” commented Caroline Fawcett, chairman of the UK charity Feline Friends.” There is a long way still to go before the more subtle signs can be identified, but we are really excited about progress to date.”
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