The tooth about your cat's dental health

Fish breath got you down?

February is Pet Dental Health Month! Time to sit back and think about your cat's teeth!

Many people don't like to think about their cat's teeth - they're sharp, pointy reminders that your cat is a natural predator and would love to shower you with gifts of innocent birds and mice, or the occasional frog. We're reminded of their teeth when they love-nip our toes in the middle of the night, or when we get a whiff of fish-breath after dinner. However, the health of your cat's mouth is more critically important that you might realize!

Dental disease is linked to kidney disease, heart disease and other chronic illnesses. Regular dental cleanings can often prevent dental disease and the need to extract teeth. It also gives us an opportunity to address other mouth abnormalities - check for cancer, broken teeth, misaligned teeth, etc. Read on to learn more about some of the conditions that can affect your cat's mouth.

If your cat has misaligned teeth, they can poke painfully into the lip, tongue, gums or the roof of the mouth. Additionally, crowded, extra, or missing teeth can cause the same trouble.














Tartar and plaque can build up underneath the gum line and destroy the tooth from below.

 Because most dental disease begins at the root of the tooth, and cat cavities (called "resorptive lesions") start from the inside and work their way to the surface, what appears to be a healthy tooth can actually be a tooth that is in the process of being destroyed.

 Bacteria and white blood cells build up at the base of the tooth and can enter the blood stream or build up a pocket of infection called an abscess, which can cause facial swelling, fever, nosebleeds or sneezing, and poor appetite. Sometimes this can occur even when most of the tooth has fallen out.

 This tooth is filled up with pus (white blood cells and bacteria).

That missing tooth left a big open hole that can fill with bacteria and cause infection. Besides the large blocks of tartar on the upper teeth, there is a large, painful cavity on one of the lower teeth, and a very painful area surrounding the exposed roots of another tooth affected by dental disease.

 This painful condition is "stomatitis" - a severe and extremely painful swelling and inflammation of the mouth. Ouch!











If your cat has never had his teeth cleaned before, you may wonder what happens during a dental cleaning or dental surgery. To find out, you may want to read more about why dental care costs so much in veterinary medicine.

Ask any one of our patients who has had a bad tooth removed! You may not realize it, but while most cats will not stop eating if their mouth is painful, they may play less, sleep more, and lose weight. Many people are simply amazed at the positive change in their cat's attitude and health after their teeth are cleaned. Ask Rowan!

Feline Medicine without Borders!

Jeremy Campbell BVSc MACVSc (Feline Med) MRCVS (and friend)

One of the interesting things about having an ABVP veterinarian at Exclusively Cats Veterinary Hospital is that we get to meet and work with a large variety of other veterinarians who love working with cats as they come to visit and study for externships, internships, or just because they want to know more about all-cat practices. 

This past month, we were thrilled to have Dr. Jeremy Campbell rotating through our hospital on a tour of US feline veterinary hospitals. He is very enthusiastic, friendly and very obviously and genuinely cares about cats. We invited him to share a little more about himself, and why he was here.

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Hi, my name is Jeremy Campbell, and I am a New Zealand qualified veterinarian who is spending time at Exclusively Cats to get experience with how things are done in Feline-only practices in this part of the world. I have been fortunate enough to meet some of you and your lovely cats in my two and half weeks here which has been fantastic. Interestingly, my professional career started off at the complete opposite end of the scale both in size and location. I began life in New Zealand working only with horses in a specialty hospital. Over the years as my skills and interests have developed I realised that there was really only one species that presented me with the personal challenges and rewards as a Veterinarian, and that is of course, the cat. 

Why do I like working with cats?

"Cats don't have owners: they have staff." "Dogs look up to us, pigs treat us as equals and cats look down on us." Basically, I love their independence, their ability to train us and the fact that they can convert the most determined/adamant dog-lover (usually men) into a lifelong cat lover with a swish of their tail and a carefully calculated show of affection..... They are such subtle creatures in their manifestations of illness and pain it is a challenge to understand that, then solve their problems. The rewards of making a sick or painful cat better is the thing that motivates me and drives me to enhance my knowledge.

I currently work in a very busy 3.5- 4-vet practice in South London; the practice is 70% cats so I am in my element. However, unlike your lucky cats, ours still have to deal with the day-to-day stress and the constant racket provided by the lesser species! We do have one evening a week which the cats can call their own and this is bliss. Bliss for the cats and bliss for me.

Guppy

Before settling back in the UK two and a half years ago, I spent three years working for the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in Hong Kong which was a very interesting time with some pretty crazy diseases and manifestations of disease. The SPCA is one of the busiest practices I have worked in with about 21 Veterinarians in total and runs very much like a human hospital being the size of a city block! It was here that I picked up my current cat Guppy. She was dumped on the doorstep of the hospital aged only 3 weeks with a nasty shoulder abscess. I intended to foster her for a short period until she was well enough to be rehomed but (not surprisingly) 4 years later she is still with us.  I have yet to rehome her………although her 3am shouts for attention sometimes tempt me!!

I am spending time in three different feline practices in the US before heading back to London in November (managing to hold the winter at bay for as long as possible…..the other two practices are in Texas!!). I am intending to use this experience as a jumping-off point to doing a speciality qualification in Feline Practice in a couple of years.

Already time is flying as my first placement here at Exclusively Cats is drawing to an end. I have learnt a lot and really enjoyed the warm hospitality and friendliness of everyone here in Waterford and Milford.

Jeremy Sept 2013