Pain in cats and dogs

Animal welfare: See things from their perspective – 23 September 2006 – New Scientist

This New Scientist article suggests that a tendency to anthropomorphize animals’ emotions sometimes prevents us from making the best decisions about their care. Specifically, cats’ stoicism (to use an anthropomorphic term!) may prompt vets to provide them with less analgesia during or after surgery.

Following up on this, I was shocked to find a 2006 article suggesting that as recently as 2001, some Canadian vets still didn’t use any preoperative or postoperative analgesia for dogs or cats (although they did use operative anesthesia – it’d be pretty hard to hold the animal still otherwise). I guess I thought everyone understood by now that animals – or at least mammals like dogs and cats – do feel pain! (A second paper by the same group investigated the factors which influence analgesic use by vets.)

Fortunately, the use of painkillers by Canadian vets has increased since a previous survey in 1994:

The Canadian study was conducted in 1994 (S. Dohoo, personal communication 2001). It was a randomized national survey with a high response rate (76%) and showed that approximately 50% of veterinarians did not use analgesics in the postoperative management of dogs and cats. The chief reasons cited for nonuse were the veterinarians’ perception of the amount of pain felt postoperatively and their concerns about the risk of adverse reactions to opioid analgesics, then the only analgesics available.

Notably, the 2001 study suggests that a substantial number of cats still don’t receive painkillers after onychectomy (declawing – about 20%) or ovariohysterectomy (spaying – about 50%). The numbers are similar for spayed dogs. Having seen my own cat trying pathetically to walk after her spaying, I know she must have been in substantial pain. But I was told it was just the effects of anaesthesia, and I was happy to believe it. She couldn’t tell me otherwise.