Cat Dental Care

During a dental cleaning procedure, your cat will first be examined to ensure they are healthy and stable for the dental procedure. We recommend that pre-anesthetic blood work is performed before your procedure. For the dental cleaning procedure, your cat will be under full general anesthetic (including full monitoring, IV fluids). While they’re asleep, we perform a complete and comprehensive exam of your cat’s mouth. This enables us to assess the level of dental disease better. The findings are recorded on a dental chart. Following this, the teeth are scaled and polished. We always recommend performing full mouth dental radiographs to assess the roots of each tooth.

Signs of dental disease consist of bad breath, tartar on teeth, red and swollen gums, drooling, pawing at the mouth, dropping food or not eating and swelling of the face. If any of these signs are seen, we highly recommend you bring your cat to your veterinarian.

Some cats can be more genetically predisposed to developing dental disease. Maine Coons and different Asian breeds can be prone to developing inflammation of the gingiva and mouth. Brachycephalic cats (such as Himalayans and Persians) can have an abnormal orientation of their teeth, which can predispose them to dental problems.

Feline tooth resorption is a tooth defect where part of the tooth is eroded away. Resorption typically starts at the gum line and destroys the enamel, but it can advance to the point where the whole tooth is destroyed. As the decay spreads this can be a very painful disease. It’s similar to cavities in people. In our cats, we recommend a full dental cleaning and dental radiographs to assess the extent of the resorption. These teeth need to be extracted.