How to Care for your Cat's Teeth - It's Brush Up February

February is the National Pet Dental Care Month and from experience, I can assure you that cats don't like having their teeth inspected, but paying attention to your cat’s teeth can help prevent disease.  As a breed, Himalayans and Siamese and I assume Tonkinese suffer increased rates of dental disease so I am always trying to find new and easy ways to keep their teeth clean. The most common dental problem is called odontoclastic  resorptive lesions or FORL. This causes decay on the gum line where the tooth meets the gum. Usually the gum line of the infected tooth is bright red and the cat has bad breath.  It is also very painful for cats with the end result usually being that the tooth has to be pulled.  Once the tooth is pulled, the gum recovers and the cat is no longer in any pain.

The "experts" have three basic suggestions in terms of dental care for your cat.   The first is brushing your cat's teeth with special cat toothpaste.  Good luck with that!  Experts suggest that you wrap a strip of gauze around your finger and rub one or two teeth and increase the number of teeth touched until the cat becomes use to it.  Sadly, mine never have gotten use to it.

Another suggestion for good dental health is to feed your cat dry food with the theory being as the cat chews, particles from the dry food rub against the teeth and act like a toothbrush of sorts helping to remove plaque.  My eight year old Himalayan, theMaxx will only eat dry food and he is now minus 4 teeth as a result of FORL, so this doesn't seem to have really worked for him -- on the other hand, perhaps it has because if he only ate wet food he might very well have less teeth.

My current new favorite way to deal with the inevitable cat tooth problems in addition to scheduling an annual cleaning with my vet is to give my cats a tooth friendly treat by the name of Perio Plus Feline Bites by Vermont based Verti Science Laboratories, a division of FoodScience. These are available from www.chewy.com. The way this works is the chewy inside contains minerals, probiotics, and CoQ10 to help control plaque and support healthy gums. The outside is designed with spirulina and pumice to remove bacteria and freshen breath. My one year old Tonkinese have taken a liking to them, but the kittens just sniff them...they are just getting their adult teeth so I think it will be some time before they try them.

The active ingredients include: spirulina, parsley, natural zeolites, cinnamon powder, champignon mushroom extract, Coenzyme Q10, Yucca Schidigera extract, cranberry extract, taurine, zinc, lactobacillus acidophilus and enterococcus faecium.  The package comes with sixty tasty bites with directions for up to 4 bites a day between meals for cats over ten pounds.