Spotting that your pet is unwell: the early signs

Dogs and cats evolved to hide weakness: in the wild, the individual showing pain becomes the target. So obvious symptoms appear once compensating stops working — which is to say, late. All an owner has is noticing small departures from the usual. This article is about those, not about emergencies: for what to do when things are already clearly wrong, we have a separate piece on first aid.

First, know what is normal for your animal

There is no universal normal: one cat sleeps fourteen hours, another eighteen, and both are healthy. What matters is not the absolute figure but the change. So the most useful thing you can do while everything is fine is to record the baseline.

• How much the animal eats in a day, and how quickly it comes to the bowl.
• Roughly how much it drinks — especially important for cats.
• How many times a day it toilets, and what that looks like.
• How it breathes while asleep: quietly and easily, or not.
• Weight. Weigh once and write down the date — then you have something to compare with.
• Favourite habits: where it sleeps, how it greets you, which games it plays every day.

Appetite and water

This is the most sensitive indicator of all, and also the one most easily written off as fussiness.

• Refusing food for more than a day in a dog, and more than a day in a cat, means calling a vet. For cats this is especially critical: not eating quickly causes liver complications.
• Eating as usual but losing weight — a classic sign that something is going on inside.
• Suddenly eating noticeably more and still losing weight is also a warning sign, not "a good appetite".
• Starting to drink much more and toilet more often — one of the most important changes there is, and never one to ignore.
• Coming to the bowl, starting and walking away; chewing on one side; dropping hard pieces — often this is the teeth.

Toileting

A litter tray is a free daily test, if you actually look at it. For dogs the same applies on the walk.

• A change in frequency in either direction. Less often is as concerning as more often.
• Blood, mucus, very dark colour, a sharp change in smell.
• Straining with no result, or sitting in the tray a long time. In cats, and male cats especially, being unable to urinate is an emergency that means a vet the same day.
• A cat suddenly going outside the tray. The first thing to rule out is not spite but pain — we have a separate article on litter tray problems.
• Diarrhoea or vomiting lasting more than a day, and with blood, immediately.

Breathing at rest

This is the most underrated home measurement and one of the most informative. Count it while the animal is asleep or lying quietly, not after play.

1. 1Watch the chest while the animal sleeps.
2. 2Count the rises of the chest for half a minute and double it. One rise and fall is one breath.
3. 3Write the number down while the animal is healthy. That is your reference point.
4. 4Check from time to time. A sustained rise in the resting rate is a reason to see a vet, even if the animal looks fine.

Movement and posture

• Getting up more slowly after sleep, lying down carefully, doing it in stages.
• No longer jumping where it always jumped. A cat that has stopped getting onto the windowsill is almost certainly in pain, not "being lazy".
• Limping — even if it only shows for the first few steps.
• Hunching, tucking the belly up, not allowing touch in one particular spot.
• Circling, holding the head tilted, bumping into things.

Important: a limp that "went away by itself" often has not gone away — the animal has simply adapted to it. If it comes back, that is a reason to see a vet, not a reason to wait longer.

Behaviour

Owners explain character changes with anything at hand — age, weather, sulking. In reality behaviour is among the first things to shift.

• Hiding in unusual places: under the bed, in a wardrobe, behind the toilet. For a cat this is one of the strongest signals there is.
• No longer coming to greet you, or conversely becoming clingy.
• Growling or hissing when touched somewhere it used to enjoy being stroked.
• Sleeping in new places — closer to warmth, or conversely on a cold floor.
• A cat that has stopped grooming and looks unkempt — or grooms one spot until it is bald.
• Sudden irritability in a calm animal. Pain looks like this far more often than a character genuinely changing.

Coat, skin, smell

• A dull coat, matted undercoat, new dandruff.
• Bald patches, scratches, crusts, reddened skin.
• A new smell: from the mouth, from the ears, from the skin. A sharp change in smell nearly always means something.
• Lumps under the skin — especially recent ones or ones that have changed size.
• Eyes: cloudiness, squinting one eye, discharge, a third eyelid that has become visible.

Regular brushing is the simplest way to catch all of this in time, because your hands go over the whole body. Our article on grooming covers that in more detail.

Why cats are harder

Cats conceal feeling unwell better than dogs — so well that often the only visible sign is "she has gone a bit quiet". Add a habit of sleeping most of the day and the change can be missed entirely.

• For a cat, "just sleeping a lot" is not a conclusion but a reason to check everything else: food, water, tray, grooming.
• A cat that has stopped jumping up high has not "aged in a week".
• Grooming changes matter in both directions: stopping is bad, and obsessively licking one patch is also bad.
• Older cats most often arrive at the vet with something that developed unnoticed over years. From around seven, regular check-ups are worth it even when everything seems fine.

How to talk to the vet

Half the value of an appointment is an accurate description. "He is just not himself" is true, but hard to start from. Prepare briefly and the visit becomes twice as useful.

1. 1When exactly you first noticed the change. Not "recently" but an approximate date.
2. 2What specifically changed: how much it eats, how much it drinks, how often it toilets, how it sleeps.
3. 3Whether it is constant or episodic — and at what time of day.
4. 4What changed in the animal's life: food, a move, a new animal, building work, new medication.
5. 5Take a video. Limping, odd breathing, seizures, tremors — none of it tends to reproduce in the consulting room, and a video settles the question in seconds.
6. 6Bring the vet records and a list of everything the animal receives, supplements included.

And the rule worth internalising: when in doubt, phone. A consultation that ends with "keep an eye on it, that is normal" costs incomparably less than a week of waiting. Animals deteriorate faster than people do, and a day gained genuinely matters here.