A video bank to help veterinarians treat pain in cats

In 5 seconds Doctoral student Sabrine Marangoni from UdeM’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine has compiled 24 videos documenting signs of pain in cats.

Cats are masters at masking their pain, a natural instinct to avoid attracting predators. However, this poses a challenge for the veterinarians and care teams who must assess and manage pain in cats.

To address this issue, Sabrine Marangoni, a Brazilian-born doctoral student in the Université de Montréal Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (known by its French acronym FMV), has compiled 24 videos to help veterinary professionals recognize signs of pain in domestic cats.

The results of her painstaking work are now available on an open-access online platform and described in an article published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery.

24 clips culled from 60 hours of footage

Sabrine Marangoni

Working with her research supervisor Paulo Steagall, Marangoni analyzed a database of 60 hours of video recordings, primarily captured during clinical studies of pain in cats conducted by the Steagall lab at the FMV. The videos document various types of pain—medical, surgical, traumatic and orofacial—in cats of different breeds, ages and sexes.

“These videos were recorded when cats were admitted to the FMV for treatment or surgery,” Marangoni explained. “We have a pain management protocol; after filming each cat for a few seconds, we administered pain relief.”

After reviewing the 60 hours of footage multiple times, Marangoni selected 24 video clips based on clarity, educational value and a “feline grimace scale“ developed at FMV.

The 24 excerpts, averaging 33 seconds in length, illustrate the 24 specific behaviours listed in an “ethogram”—an expert-validated inventory of pain-related behaviours in cats—that has been published in the journal PLOS ONE. The video clips have been posted to the YouTube account of Professor Steagall, who now teaches at the University of Hong Kong.

The videos cover a wide range of pain-related behaviours, including:

  • posture and body position
  • affective-emotional states
  • vocalization
  • feeding
  • facial expressions

Decoding feline body language

A cat suffering from a congenital condition called symblepharon, which causes conjunctivitis.

Unlike humans, who can articulate their pain, cats communicate discomfort in more subtle ways. They may remain motionless at the back of their cage, appear inattentive to their surroundings or adopt certain postures.

“But these behaviours can vary depending on the individual cat and the procedure,” Marangoni said. “Pain-related behaviours aren’t necessarily identical because every cat is different and also because a kitten won’t show pain in the same way as an older cat.”

Marangoni believes the video compilation will help veterinary teams tailor their pain management practices.

“We believe this initiative is an important step forward in training veterinary professionals,” she concluded. “The idea is to use this freely available resource to help both those involved in treating cats and cat owners learn to recognize feline pain behaviours.”

Share

You may also like