My two younger girls, since they no longer have any health issues, now only go once a year, for a check up and PureVax rabies shot. Now that they are eating so much raw, including gizzards and wings, I don't worry about their teeth so much. (concern over dental health was one of the things that has always kept me taking all cats twice a year. If a problem started a month after a vet visit, I worried, that's a long time for a cat to have a toothache between vet visits. But the gizzards and wings will keep their teeth clean, PLUS if I see any signs they are having trouble eating them, I'll know there is a problem and bring them right in)
SK goes twice a year. In June she gets her check up blood work and a UA and in December she gets her check up PureVax rabies shot (and anal gland expression, for some reason she seems to always need it in December, but not in June). Hmmmm..I just had a thought about that. I wonder if eating grass has anything to do with it? well I'll start a new thread on that.
As for dentals, my vet is very conservative when it comes to professional dentals. She checks their teeth very thoroughly, and shows me what is what in their mouths when she does. If she sees a chunk of tartar she'll try to pick it off with her fingernail and is sometimes successful. So, when she recommends a dental, I believe her. None of my current cats have had any (they are 8 1/2, 7 and 2 1/2)
My Sweet Pea had to have them almost yearly, with extractions, because he had resorptive lesions. It wasn't done lightly, it was a very big deal with him because of his seizures and taking phenobarbital. My senior girly that predeceased him had to have one. It was when she was 17 years old, she was in fairly advanced kidney disease, untreated hyperthyroid, untreated high blood pressure (because she couldn't tolerate the medications for them), megacolon, arthritis, heart murmur, and had had, at that point, one stroke.
But her mouth was very bad and her quality of life was suffering. The risks associated with leaving the mouth untouched (heart failure, advancing the kidney disease even more) and the fact that she was suffering were weighed by me and my vet, and I ultimately decided that even if the anesthesia shortened her life, or if she couldn't handle it and left us during the anesthesia, quality of life was the most important thing, and she was suffering.
She came through it with flying colors and felt so much better afterwords I was just thrilled. She was like a new cat almost!
So there are two success stories associated with dental work in cats, but I also have a nightmare story.
My little Bibbs. This was when I was going to another vet. She had a bad tooth. The dental went fine, her teeth were cleaned and she ended up losing two teeth. About a month later, her nose started to run. I brought her to the vet and she was put on antibiotics. It cleared up, but a few months later it started to run again.
This went on for more than a year, and oh gosh this is hard to write. I just didn't know as much then as I do now. Why didn't that vet suggest x rays to see if there was something up there? Why didn't I leave that horrible place sooner? As it was, by the time I switched vets it was too late for Bibbs, she had a full blown cancer tumor in her sinus and I had to let her go. By then I was wiping the mucous off her nose constantly, hourly through out the night and coming home from work on my lunch hour. I was afraid she would suffocate in her own snot, it was coming to that, so I let her go. I am convinced that this is what happened, having read about it after the fact: sometimes during an extraction a filament of tooth root will get away and travel into the sinus cavity. A foreign body up in the sinus like that causes irritation, inflammation, and leads to a cancer forming around the object.
If that vet had done an x ray, perhaps Bibbs could have been saved. The thing could have been removed before the cancer formed. It hurts the most because of my Sweet Pea. He was absolutely DEVASTATED when we lost Bibbs. She was barely 14. He should have had her with him for years more. I was so worried over him and his grieving I never did get to properly grieve for Bibbs. I thought I was going to lose him too, back then. My gosh it was TERRIBLE.
So, when Sweet Pea started the FORL, and had to have extractions almost yearly, at the most 18 months apart, I was nervous as heck and would remind my vet before every procedure to account for every tooth root when she did the extractions! She never seemed to take offense.
Lola and CC, you have my sympathy for what you went through. It's too bad there are so many not so great vets out there.
