Should I take all my cat's teeth out?
Hi,
We have a domestic longhair male cat who is about ~10 years old. He's orange & white (rarely gets to use the braincell) neutered and currently weighing in around 3.7kg.
Most of the time we have had him (re-homed him around 2 years old in 2018) he has had loose stools. Our previous vets never seemed too concerned about this. After recently moving house and changing vets, our new ones are more concerned and we've been advised to try some specific food and have seen some noticeable improvements. We also then had a full abdominal "workup" (X-Rays and Ultrasound) due to concerns around inflammation which overall found nothing major but did show that some of his kidney function looks to have diminished though not to the point of kidney disease yet thankfully.
He has also suffered fairly long term from gingivitis. He's had a dental scale before and though we have tried to brush his teeth we have never had much success getting him to put up with it. His teeth are now quite bad again and certainly due for another procedure.
Given this combined with the abdominal workup, ourvets have suggested they would like to extract all his teeth due to:
- High likeliness that he will require regular dental procedures given the condition of his teeth now
- High priority of reducing any sources of inflammation to try to protect his remaining kidney function
They are suggesting we do this in two procedures at least 6 weeks apart - each procedure extracting half the teeth. We've been quoted between £1600 and £2000 per procedure so an expected total cost of ~£3200-4000. This seems on the high side but it's hard to tell without "shopping around".
I have heard that many cats do very well after having this kind of procedure but would be very grateful to hear any informed opinions on if this seems like a reasonable course of action at this point. It's obviously a fairly major procedure to put him through that I want to ensure is the right thing before we go ahead.
Thanks in advance.