If your dog has started licking their paws raw, or your cat hides under the bed every time the doorbell rings, you're not imagining it. Anxiety in pets is more common — and more overlooked — than most owners realize.
According to a large-scale behavioral study published in Scientific Reports, more than 72% of dogs show at least one anxiety-related behavior. For cats, estimates run even higher because their signs are quieter and easier to mistake for "personality."
The hard part isn't that pets hide their feelings. It's that the signals look so ordinary we stop noticing them. A little extra licking. A skipped meal. A pacing routine before bed. Individually, these feel like nothing. Together, they can be a slow-building stress response that — left unaddressed — affects your pet's sleep, digestion, immune system, and lifespan.
This guide walks through the 10 most common (and most missed) signs of anxiety in dogs and cats, what's actually happening in their body, and when it's time to talk to your vet.
What Is Pet Anxiety, Really?
Anxiety isn't just "being scared." It's a sustained state of nervous system arousal — your pet's body stuck in a low-grade fight-or-flight mode, even when nothing in the environment is obviously threatening.
The triggers vary widely:
- Separation — being left alone, or sensing you're about to leave
- Noise — thunder, fireworks, construction, vacuum cleaners
- Social stress — new pets, new people, unfamiliar environments
- Routine disruption — a move, a new schedule, a family member leaving
- Age-related changes — cognitive decline in senior pets often shows up as anxiety first
Whatever the trigger, the body's response is similar: elevated cortisol, faster heart rate, suppressed digestion, disrupted sleep. Over weeks and months, this takes a real physical toll.
The 10 Signs Most Owners Miss
1. Excessive Licking, Chewing, or Grooming
This is the single most underrecognized sign of anxiety in both dogs and cats. A dog who licks their front paws until the fur turns rust-colored. A cat who over-grooms their belly until bald patches appear. These aren't habits — they're self-soothing behaviors, the pet equivalent of nail-biting.
Licking releases endorphins, so anxious pets learn to use it as a coping tool. The problem: it can escalate into acral lick dermatitis (in dogs) or psychogenic alopecia (in cats), both of which require veterinary treatment.
When to take it seriously: If you notice a specific spot they keep returning to, or if the licking happens during predictable stress moments (you leaving, storms, visitors).
2. Changes in Appetite
Anxiety suppresses digestion. When the body is in fight-or-flight mode, blood flow shifts away from the gut and toward the muscles — your pet literally isn't hungry.
Watch for:
- Skipping meals they used to love
- Eating only when you're in the room
- Suddenly becoming a picky eater after a household change
- Or the opposite: stress-eating, gulping food too fast
A 2-3 day appetite shift around a known trigger (vet visit, travel) is normal. A pattern that lasts a week or more is worth investigating.
3. Pacing, Restlessness, or Inability to Settle
Calm pets can lie down and stay down. Anxious pets often can't. You'll see them get up, circle, lie down, get up again — especially in the evening when the house quiets down and they have nothing to distract them.
In dogs, this often looks like wandering between rooms checking on family members. In cats, it can look like jumping from perch to perch without settling. Both are signs the nervous system isn't downshifting properly.
4. Yawning, Lip-Licking, or "Whale Eye" in Dogs
These are what trainers call calming signals — small body language cues dogs use to signal stress to themselves and others.
- Yawning when they're not tired
- Lip-licking when there's no food around
- Whale eye — the whites of their eyes showing, usually when they turn their head away but keep watching something
Spotting these in the moment is one of the most useful skills a dog owner can develop. They tell you your dog is uncomfortable before the behavior escalates into growling or hiding.
5. Tail Position and Ear Set
Tail wagging doesn't always mean happy. A tail held low and wagging fast, or tucked tightly against the body, often signals anxiety — not friendliness.
For cats: a thrashing tail, a tail held low with a curled tip, or fur that visibly puffs along the spine are all stress markers. Ears flattened to the side ("airplane ears") or pinned back signal the same thing.
6. Hiding or Withdrawal
This is more obvious in cats — under the bed, behind the couch, on top of the fridge. But dogs do it too, just more subtly: retreating to a crate they don't normally use, lying behind furniture, choosing to sleep in a different room than usual.
Sudden withdrawal in a previously social pet is a strong signal something has shifted — either emotionally or physically. (Anxiety and pain often look identical from the outside, which is why a vet visit matters when behavior changes suddenly.)
7. Destructive Behavior When Alone
Chewed door frames. Shredded couch cushions. Scratched windowsills. These aren't acts of revenge — they're symptoms of separation anxiety, which affects an estimated 14-20% of dogs at some point in their lives.
The telltale sign isn't the destruction itself, but where it happens: exit points (doors, windows) and items that smell strongly of you (shoes, pillows). A bored dog chews the nearest thing. An anxious dog chews their way back to you.
8. Excessive Vocalization
Barking, whining, howling, or — in cats — meowing far more than usual. Pay attention to when it happens. Vocalizing that starts the moment you reach for your keys, or that ramps up at the same time every evening, points to anxiety rather than a need for food or attention.
Senior pets who suddenly start vocalizing at night may be experiencing cognitive dysfunction syndrome (the pet equivalent of dementia), which has a strong anxiety component and is highly manageable when caught early.
9. Sleep Disruption
A healthy adult dog sleeps 12-14 hours a day. Cats sleep 12-16. Anxious pets often sleep less, sleep more lightly, or shift their sleep to odd hours — being restless at night and crashing during the day when the house is calm.
You may also notice twitching, whimpering, or sudden waking that goes beyond normal dream activity. This is the nervous system failing to fully downshift into deep sleep, which is exactly when the body does its repair work.
10. Digestive Changes
Soft stool. Intermittent diarrhea. Vomiting with no clear cause. Gas. These often get blamed on food — but the gut and the nervous system are tightly linked through what scientists call the gut-brain axis.
Roughly 70% of a pet's serotonin (the calm chemical) is produced in the gut. When anxiety disrupts the gut microbiome, mood gets worse. When mood gets worse, the gut gets more disrupted. It's a loop that's hard to break without addressing both ends.
Why These Signs Get Missed
Three reasons, in order of how often we see them:
1. They look like personality. "She's just shy." "He's always been a picky eater." "That's just how she is around new people." Sometimes that's true. Often it's a long-running anxiety pattern that started so gradually no one noticed it had a beginning.
2. They look like training problems. A dog who can't settle gets labeled hyperactive. A cat who hides gets labeled antisocial. A dog who chews when alone gets labeled disobedient. The behavior is real — but punishing it doesn't address the nervous system state underneath, and often makes the anxiety worse.
3. They look like aging. "He's just slowing down." Senior pets do change, but a sudden behavioral shift in an older pet is almost always a signal of something — pain, cognitive decline, or anxiety — and is worth a vet visit.
When to See a Vet
Talk to your vet if you notice:
- Sudden behavioral changes (anything new within the last 2-4 weeks)
- Physical signs alongside behavior (weight loss, bald patches, persistent digestive issues)
- Self-harming behavior (paw licking that's broken the skin, tail chasing that draws blood)
- Quality-of-life issues — your pet can't enjoy walks, meals, or rest the way they used to
Pain and anxiety look nearly identical from the outside. A vet visit can rule out medical causes first, which is always the right starting point.
The Takeaway
Pet anxiety rarely arrives loudly. It builds in small signals — a licked paw, a skipped meal, a tail that won't quite relax — that are easy to miss one at a time and impossible to miss once you know what you're looking at.
The most important thing an owner can do isn't to fix every sign immediately. It's to notice. Pets can't tell us they're struggling. But their bodies are talking all the time, and learning to read them is the first step toward giving them a calmer, longer, fuller life.
In our next article, we'll break down the gut-brain axis in pets — why 70% of the calm chemistry happens in the gut, and what that means for how we support anxious pets.