My sister adopted two inbred cats a while back. Two of the sweetest, dumbest things I've ever met. One of them, Tony (who we called the sewer monster, among, many, many other names), was stunted, so even at a few years old was no bigger than my current 4 month old kitten. Everything was stunted except for his teeth though, which seemed to be full sized. So he always had these vampire fangs hanging out of his mouth. He had to get them all removed too, which just made him look even weirder. Poor little freak of nature passed last year, miss his gummy little face lol
Here, have my other cat! He (Yoshi) is about 4 months younger than Nacho, poor thing hanged on to dear life at my dad‘s car’s beaks. We found him a day after my birthday and he was ~ 4 weeks old then. This picture is him after he lost half of his teeth (he’s toothless since almost a year now)
Here's our Sir Kitty (RIP 2004-2020) who also had a bunch of teeth removed. Without his upper teeth, his upper lip would sometimes get caught in his lower tooth. When that happened, we called him "our little orcling."
One of my little guys had to go through that back in August. What’s amazing is that he had to eat wet food for several days, and he and my other cat absolutely don’t like wet food. Even when they were kittens, I tried getting them some nice refrigerated wet food as a treat a few times… barely touched.
I was astonished when my vet told me that once he healed he could go back to dry food. Cats apparently hardly chew their food at all. Vinnie didn’t need all his teeth out, but he had like 8 or 9 removed, and the vet said even if all his teeth had been removed he’d be able to eat dry food.
After the surgery we started calling him gummy nubbins.
Yep, in fact my remaining cat has to eat dental care food that is intentionally super-large dry hollow chunks so it's too big to swallow and they have to crack them open, so she cleans her teeth a bit.
But they can also just grind dry food between their gums without injuring themselves. Cats are hardcore! 🤘
My vet quoted like $1100 for removing the rest of my kitties teeth. She doesn't paw at her mouth like it hurts, just drools a little, so I've put it off. What made you decide to do it?
Yeah, it was fucking stupid expensive at about that same rate. I think in the end, it was more like $1200 or $1300 because there were more teeth that needed to be pulled than she could get eyes on during the exam. I decided to do it b/c there were so many teeth that needed pulling and that it would likely only get worse if I let it go longer.
Mine had to get her teeth cleaned and some extracted last year. Her sad, pathetic voice on the drive home was heartbreaking. Poor kitty. But shouldn't hurt to eat crunchy food, so worth it.