The cats are whining because we’ve taken the food bowls up for the night. We don’t normally do this but Harriet is going in to the vet tomorrow to have a tooth removed.
Since we got her she has had the worst breath of any cat I’ve ever known. They just get hard food but it smells like an entire school of fish is rotting in her mouth constantly. Really. It is astonishing. Last month, we noticed that her gum was inflamed so we asked the vet and it turns out that one of her canines is loose and infected. She’s having it out tomorrow and they’ll clean the rest of her teeth.
You know what that means right? Tomorrow afternoon we’ll have a drugged kitty. Oh, the antics that we have to look forwar– what I really meant was that tomorrow she’ll be healthy and happy.
Bingo had a tender gum several vet visits ago, and the vet said to keep an eye out for excessive sensitivity, but that the tooth would probably just dissolve. I thought she was joking, but sure enough, by the next visit, it had vanished.
Keep the tooth, we can make it into a charm… or a cat toy.
How bizarre. I can’t imagine it actually dissolving. Falling out? Yes.
Speaking of, I asked the vet and she’s kept the teeth for me. There are three of them.
ooh, 3… earrings and a pendant!
They are pretty nasty, actually.
Our old poodle had terrible breath too when we first got him from the shelter. Yep, it was his teeth. They were in terrible shape. We took him in to have them cleaned and they had to pull several of them. He still has one that sticks out which we lovingly call his snaggle-tooth. Since then, as much as we’re opposed to unnecessary doggie-drugs, we’ve started using a dental additive in his water to help keep his teeth clean. It helps, but he’s old, and so we sort of expect him to smell a bit between baths. It’s actually rather endearing . . . in a way.
I hope all goes well at the vet!
My mother-in-law has said that you know you love someone when you love them because of their faults. Clearly, you love your poodle.
You have a smart mother-in-law.
I do.
When my kitty had her teeth cleaned, she was cuddly the rest of the day. Which is notable because she is NOT the cuddly type at all. Pet her on demand, yes, but she won’t curl up with you and CERTAINLY does not like being picked up at all. So to have her act as if the only thing she wanted was to be in my arms and be loved was fun.
I also got to tease her about her Hollywood smile for awhile because her fangs were nice and sparkly white, lol. Hopefully Harriet will be the same!
Oh, how adorable! Poor thing.
It was the least of her problems, though. She also wanted OFF with the e-collar, because the vet had operated on her bad eye. This is the cat with the odd eyes, you’ve seen the photos…where one is bigger than the other? It’s because before I got her, something happened, probably a fight, that injured her eyelid and the scar tissue pinned it open so she could not close it all the way. Her inner eyelid ended up compensating and she DOES see out of it, but still. I was working for the vet at the time, and she couldn’t find anyone in the books or online who had done this type of surgery before, so she decided to grasp glory and offered to do it for the price of the drugs only since it was experimental…her time was free. I said yes, and the vet’s in some book now, lol. Of course, Blackie still looks wonky, but she can close the eye fully (muscle memory just makes her not want to). The vet made me follow up with an eye specialist who travels in from Jacksonville one day a week, and he said “Well, there’s another surgery that I could talk your boss through, but it really would be cosmetic only, she’s done what needs to be done.” Sooo we all said “Let’s not and say we did.”
But yes, she had to have an e-collar put on and this was NOT acceptable, heh. She eventually pulled it off underneath a chair and I let it go, because she wasn’t messing with her eye or her face at all.
It’s not often that eye surgery sounds comic.
One of mine was drooling and clawing at his mouth a while back. Turned out he had broken a tooth- apparently, one of the other cats had judo-flipped him a little too hard.
Eek! That sounds horrible for the poor thing.