Cat pain and human unemployment
This week’s Caturday Monday Cat Fact
Cats are really excellent at hiding pain and illness. This is a problem when we try to be the best cat caregivers we can be, because it means we can miss signs that they’re in need of veterinary attention. Luckily, anyone can learn to read the signs of pain.
There are two kinds of pain we need to be worried about: acute and chronic. Acute pain begins suddenly and is short-term, generally less than three months. Acute pain can be caused by injury, trauma, surgery, and illness/disease. Chronic pain is pain that persists after an illness or injury would be expected to heal, or pain not associated with healing processes.
There are different ways to assess pain levels depending on the type of pain. For acute pain, scientists have developed the Feline Grimace Scale, which assesses five different facial features (called action units) on a scale of 0 to 2, with 0 being absent and 2 being markedly present. The five action units? Ear position, orbital tightening, muzzle tension, whisker change, and head position.
Ear position is simple: as the ears become more rotated outward, the score increases. Orbital tightening can be thought of as squinting, and the more squinted the higher the score. Muzzle tension, to me, seems like the hardest to spot. In a pain-free cat, the whisker pads (which my friend Yara Haridy lovingly calls “faceballs”) are round, and with increasing pain the whisker pads become more taut and elliptical in shape. When you think about it, the mouth is becoming more stretched, just as when a person grimaces! Whisker changes are easy to spot, but not quite linear in progress. A pain-free cat will have relaxed whiskers that are curved. A cat with a score of 1 will have whiskers pulled closer together that might be curved or straight. When the score moves to 2, the whiskers become straight and start to extend forward. Head position is easy - it moves downward as pain increases.
If you want to learn more and test your skills, you can do so at the Feline Grimace Scale website!
What am I working on?
Tuesday was the last day of my postdoc, which means that I’m ✨officially unemployed✨. I applyed for Employment Insurance on Wednesday and I’m taking it (relatively) easy for the rest of April. Of course I’ll still need to be keeping an eye on the job market and finishing obligations, but it will be good to have a bit of time to centre myself, get a bit organized, and think about what comes next.
One thing that’s super unfun is that uOttawa cut off my online access three days after my position ended. It took them three months to pay me after I started, which is quite a difference.
I will be applying to get Research Associate status at the Canadian Museum of Nature, which would mean that I would have access to the collections and some of the museum’s resources. These types of positions are not paid, but allow researchers to do science in exchange for helping the museum’s reputation.
On Tuesday, I did a Skype a Scientist call with a Grade 5 classroom in Illinois. I ended up having to field questions about Colossal’s genetically engineered wolves, which makes sense since it was a week after the news broke. I tried to express my concerns without being overly negative, and I think I did an alright job. There were a few students who were super eager and asked a few questions each, which is always kind of fun to see. It’s nice when you get to talk to kids who are excited about science.
On Wednesday, I had grand plans to finish the 1-cm bone chucks of the wolf specimens I worked on at the CMN…but our Isomet blade broke again. This time I was using the bone chuck (essentially a C-clamp on a feeding arm) to cut the specimen and wasn’t even touching it! Needless to say, I am exausted with the constant issues and feel terribly for making the museum pay for new blades every couple weeks (they are $900 a pop).
Also this week, I added updates for Bird Friendly Ottawa’s World Migratory Bird Day event, to be held on May 10, onto the organization’s website. If you are an Ottawa-area person and want to come out and celebrate birds, please come join us!
Cat updates
Cola had a dermatology follow-up on Monday. Her itchiness has improved significantly since her first specialist appointment in January, but she had started chewing the fur off her forelegs again after I went away the end of March. She also lost a bit of weight since January, but it wasn’t an unhealthy amount and makes sense, since she stopped eating kibble and is only eating wet food now. We will monitor that to make sure she’s at a stable weight now.
Because Cola is doing well with her specialty diet + cyclosporine treatment, there are two things we’ll do next: a dietary challenge and continuing to taper down her medication. The dietary challenge will be to introduce single-ingredient treats (about 1 Tbsp per day) to see if she has a reaction, essentially a trial to start to figure out what she is allergic to. Because she’s been chewing on her arms, I am waiting until I know for sure that fur is returning before starting. Then I will start with some salmon. For her medication, we will work from the current dose every 2 days, down to every 3 days, then every 4 days, and potentially discontinue if she is still doing well at that point.
Khonsu and Momo are their usual selves. I am working on getting Momo to eat stress-free close to the door to the foster (Cola’s) room. We are starting far away – all the way down the hallway, but with the door in sight – and slowly moving forward when she doesn’t show signs of stress (i.e., staring at the door, indications that she thinks someone is going to come and steal her food).
Learning
To help get Momo acclimated to Cola, I am working my way through The Science of Feline Introductions, a self-paced course at the IAABC Foundation. It is taught by Patience Fisher, a cat behaviour consultant in Pittsburgh.
Reading
I am currently reading Tanya Talaga’s 2018 Massey Lecture, All Our Relations. It is a heartbreaking dive into the suicide crisis among Indigenous people in Canada and all over the globe. It is definitely a sad read, but I feel it’s really important to understand what colonizers – my ancestors – have done to the people who lived on Turtle Island since time immemorial.
I am really needing to get my online article reading sorted out. I was using Omnivore as a read-it-later app, but when they were acquired in 2024 I never really found a solution I liked. I was using Raindrop.io, but didn’t find it perfect. I like Wallabag, but am frustrated with the lack of highlighting on iOS. There are a couple really nice iOS apps that integrate with Wallabag (Fiery Feeds and ReadKit), but they don’t have highlighting. I could try Readwise Reader again, but I would prefer to use something open source.
To see more of what I’ve been reading, you can check out my profile on The Storygraph or check out this year’s 365 papers list on my Codeberg page.
Listening
I like listening to really chill, uncomplicated novels as audiobooks when I go to sleep. I used to love the Warrior series by Erin Hunter as a kid, so I’m revisiting it as my bedtime stories. I am currently listening to a stand-alone volume called Bramblestar’s Storm.
Watching
I’m still watching Hell’s Kitchen (it’s a long series!). I also got caught up on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which is kind of Canada’s version of SNL and brings some much needed levity to everything going on right now.
No spoilers, but Nymphia Wind’s outfit at the RuPaul’s Drag Race finale was SO GOOD.