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Signs your senior cat is in pain often hide in small changes to appetite, movement, grooming and sleep, but they are worth watching for
Cats spent thousands of years surviving as both predator and prey, and that dual instinct still shapes how they experience pain today. A dog that pulls a muscle usually favors the leg openly and lets everyone know. A cat feeling the same discomfort is more likely to keep eating, keep using the litter box and keep sitting in its usual spot on the couch. It quietly works around pain that would send most people straight to a doctor. Hiding weakness kept a wild cat safe from predators and rivals. In a living room, it means real pain in an older cat can go unnoticed for months.
Age raises the stakes. Osteoarthritis, dental disease, chronic kidney disease and other sources of ongoing pain become far more common once a cat reaches its senior years. Veterinarians generally place that stage at age 11 and older. X $TWTR-rays of cats in this age group routinely show joint degeneration consistent with osteoarthritis in the large majority of cases. Only a small fraction of those cats are ever diagnosed or treated for it, because the outward signs look like ordinary aging rather than pain.
