Cat Owners Can (Almost) All Agree on One Thing

[douglas9]

On the list of perfect pet parents, Mikel Delgado, a professional feline-behavior consultant, probably ranks high. The Ph.D. expert in animal cognition spends half an hour each evening playing with her three torbie cats, Ruby, Coriander, and Professor Scribbles. She’s trained them to take pills in gelatin capsules, just in case they eventually need meds. She even commissioned a screened-in backyard catio so that the girls can safely venture outside. Delgado would do anything for her cats—well, almost anything. “Guilty as charged,” Delgado told me. “I do not brush my cats’ teeth.”

To be fair, most cat owners don’t—probably because they’re well aware that it’s weird, if not downright terrifying, to stick one’s fingers inside an ornery cat’s mouth. Reliable stats are scarce, but informal surveys suggest that less than 5 percent of owners give their cats the dental scrub-a-dub-dub—an estimate that the vets I spoke with endorse. “I’m always very shocked if someone says they brush their cat’s teeth,” says Anson Tsugawa, a veterinary dentist in California. When Steve Valeika, a vet in North Carolina, suggests the practice to his clients, many of them “look at me like I’ve totally lost it,” he told me. (This is where I out myself as one of the loons: My cats, Calvin and Hobbes, get their teeth brushed thrice weekly.)

There certainly is an element of absurdity to all of this. Lions, after all, aren’t skulking the savannas for Oral-Bs. But our pets don’t share the diets and lifestyles of their wild counterparts, and their teeth are quite susceptible to the buildup of bacteria that can eventually invade the gums to trigger prolonged, painful disease. Studies suggest that most domestic cats older than four end up developing some sort of gum affliction; several experts told me that the rates of periodontal disease in household felines can exceed 80 percent. Left untreated, these ailments can cost a cat one or more teeth, or even spread its effects throughout the body, potentially compromising organs such as the kidneys, liver, and heart.


https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/08/cat-gum-health-brush-teeth/671206/?utm_source=feed

[marybourg]

1. My late Angel used to lie quietly in my arms and

allow me to brush his teeth, but then for three days afterwards would not come within 10 feet of me. I gave it up.