if-i-am-not-for-me:pangur-and-grim: saracirce:followthebluebell: I don’t believe that the Fe
if-i-am-not-for-me:pangur-and-grim: saracirce: followthebluebell: I don’t believe that the Feline Grimace Scale is perfect—- cats won’t present typically if they’re in unfamiliar settings (like a vet’s office) and are already stressed. But I think it’s a great start for cat owners at home to use. My cat grimacing. She had a soft tissue injury to her back that was causing her a great deal of pain. 1st picture was before I realized something was wrong, 2nd picture was shortly after being on an anti-inflammatory and pain killer. Compared to her normal expression, I can really see she is in pain. Especially with the eyes and here’s a good Pangur grimace! this is after I got her home from a week’s hospitalization for an unknown pathogen that wrecked her gut. back home, she relapsed and spent a couple days in pain/not eating (though it’s now months later and she’s perfectly fine!) This is Spike. He isn’t exhibiting any grimace indicators in either of these photos (his head is tilted down in the second because that’s where my hand was), but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t experiencing pain.Spike is 18 years old and has moderate arthritis. He is in chronic pain. We supplement him with glucosamine and chondroitin to help mitigate the discomfort, but we know he’s still sore.The key here is that his pain is A) chronic rather than acute and B) we discern his pain from his body rather than his face. Grimacing is used to observe acute pain like post-operative pain, pain from an injury, dental pain, and painful elimination. But just like a human with arthritis isn’t constantly wincing, a cat with chronic pain doesn’t grimace unless, for instance, a sore joint is touched or manipulated.We know Spike is in pain because his tail hangs low (normal content and comfortable tail posture in cats is upright or straight from the spine), he moves slowly, he won’t sit with his haunches touching the floor, and he reacts negatively to his hips being touched.So remember that this scale is best used to assess how much pain your cat is in if they’ve been injured (while you’re on the way to the vet) or how uncomfortable they are after surgery. An absence of these indicators does NOT mean your cat isn’t in pain. -- source link