Feline All Right?

How can you tell if your cat is feeling any pain? Used to be, you would wait to be nipped or snapped at or have its tail lash out at your legs, but now, guess what? There's an app for that!

Up in chilly Calgary, Alberta there is an animal health technology company called Sylvester.ai. Their new "Tably" app uses your cell camera to tell you if a cat is in any pain. 

Cat Scan

The app looks at the cat photo, and from the position of its ears and head, its degree of eye narrowing, muzzle tension, and whisker change, deduces how much distress the cat feels (if any).  And some periodical called Scientific Reports (I'll look for it on the newsstand, if I can find a newsstand) came up with the "Feline Grimace Scale" or FGS, calling in a "valid and reliable tool for acute pain assessment in cats."

Miche Priest of Sylvester.ai says, "It helps human cat owners know if their cat is in pain or not. We were able to train a machine using machine learning and a series of images."

And that sort of advance in science is just what a young veterinarian needs, says Dr. Liz Ruelle of the Wild Rose Cat Clinic in Calgary, whose algorithm developers developed the algorithm.

"I love working with cats, have always grown up with cats," Dr Ruelle says. "For other colleagues, new grads, who maybe have not had quite so much experience, it can be very daunting to know - is your patient painful?"

Sure, checking the cat's face is helpful, but Alice Potter from the RSPCA (the British animal charity similar to our ASPCA) said cat owners should look over Felix's entire body, including the tail.

"Cats that are worried or scared will hold that tail really tight and tense to them. And then aside from that, there's also just thinking about their behavior in terms of are they eating, drinking, toileting, sleeping like they usually do?"

We've only had cat(s) here for nine years, but I can tell you, if you are in tune with Ms Whiskers or Mr Paws, they will tell you what's up. You'll know.

And I have long posited that cats can understand every word that's being said to them. I've never had a cat tell me that was wrong!