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Five Tips on Cat Dental Cleaning

Cat Dental Care Tips: 5 Ways to Care for Your Cat's Teeth 

& Why it Matters

Do you know how many teeth cats have? 30—making every single tooth important to them maintaining a healthy and happy life. While kittens come into this world without teeth, they start to get them once they’re about 2 weeks old. As their pet parent, it’s your job to look out for their pearly whites by starting regular cat teeth cleaning as early as possible.

If you neglect your feline’s teeth, they’re at risk for plaque buildup which can lead to tooth decay, gum disease, or a more serious health problem. To make sure this doesn’t happen to your companion, we’re equipping you with 5 cat dental care tips to keep your pet's teeth healthy and strong.

1. Schedule regular visits to your pet's veterinarian

Take your cat to a veterinarian for their annual exam which includes a dental check-up. If you notice foul-smelling breath, excessive drooling, or anything out of the ordinary, make sure to bring it up.

2. Start and stick to a daily cleaning ritual

Routine cat teeth cleaning is best to start when your kitten is young. If you start when they’re older, you’ll face some resistance but oral hygiene is still possible. The first step to learn how to brush cat teeth is to get your feline accustomed to dental care products. Place a small amount of cat toothpaste (never human toothpaste) on your finger, and let your pet lick it off.

Work your way up to wrapping your finger with gauze and massaging their teeth and gums. You can also use cat dental wipes or a pet toothbrush, but again, never a human toothbrush. Start at a slow pace, cleaning a single tooth or two at first. Then, increase how long and the number of teeth you clean.

3. Feed your cat a well-balanced and healthy diet

Many brands offer oral care formulas to assist with cat dental care. There are special kibble designs that wipe away tartar build-up as well as formulas that use interlocking fiber technology to help with cat teeth cleaning. If you choose to only feed your cat wet food, place extra focus on their oral hygiene to clean out leftover food debris. This is key in reducing bacteria and plaque which are the main agents of tooth decay.

4. Offer your pet cat dental treats

Switch up your daily brushing ritual with a few Veterinary Oral Health Council (VOHC)-approved cat dental treats. While they won't replace daily tooth brushing, they can help keep your cat's teeth clean and limit oral health issues. Treats come in a variety of flavors including chicken, salmon, tuna, beef, and more for all types of eaters.

Petco's picks for cat dental treats

5. Experiment with chew toys and dental chews

Believe it or not, chew toys are not just for dogs! You can select a VOHC-approved chew toy designed for cats. Not only does it help satisfy your cat's desire to chew, the toys or dental chews can help curb plaque buildup as well.

Petco's picks for cat chew toys

Felines are experts at concealing their pain making it important to have a cat dental care plan in place. If you notice bad breath, red gums, chewing on one side of the mouth, a decreased appetite, drooling, or grooming less often, it’s time to consult their veterinarian. With professional care, you can get to the root of the problem and come up with a special diet that supports healthy oral hygiene.

5 reasons cat dental care is important

1. Cats are not small dogs

Cats are not small dogs

Veterinary school professors love to repeat this patently obvious observation to their students. It's supposed to remind us that dogs and cats aren't just different on the outside, they're different on the inside as well. The types of dental diseases they get are a great example of this.

While dogs get a lot of tooth root abscesses and fractured teeth, the most common dental lesion seen in cats are something called feline odontoclastic resorptive lesions, abbreviated FORLs. These lesions can be loosely compared to cavities in people, but the holes in the teeth tend to occur on the sides on the teeth and not the crowns (as cavities usually do in people). Most of the time FORLs are on the labial side, or side closest to the lips, of the teeth.

We don't know what causes these lesions. Many people believe that diet plays a role, but no one is really sure how, since FORLs have been found in the fossilized remains of cats from 800 years ago. Regular dental care definitely helps, but cats with FORLs seem to have them no matter what we do. Typically the only treatment is to extract the teeth, because these lesions lead to exposure of the pulp cavity and considerable pain for the cat.

2. Even kittens can have severe gum and dental disease

Even kittens can have severe gum and dental disease

Feline oral stomatitis is a disease that affects the entire oral cavity, causing severe inflammation of the gums, pain, excessive salivation, and halitosis (bad breath). This is a heart-breaking disease, as it is often seen in very young cats, and even kittens. We believe that many of these cats have underlying viral diseases, but there is also a suspected tie-in to the immune system as well.

Cats with stomatitis will develop FORLs eventually if the teeth are not routinely cleaned - and even sometimes regardless of routine cleaning. Many of these cats need to be put on immunosuppressive drugs. In cats with severe stomatitis we sometimes have to extract all of the teeth, or all of the teeth behind the canine teeth, since it's the teeth in the back of the mouth that are typically affected. The good news is that these cats are pain-free without their teeth.

3. Cats can continue to eat without some or all of their teeth

Cats can continue to eat without some or all of their teeth

I knew you were starting to wonder about this based on the last topic. Clearly extracting teeth isn't ideal, but when cats have FORLs there really aren't any other options. The teeth are painful, and once extracted, the source of the pain is gone.

Owners often ask if they'll have to switch their cats to a canned food diet once they have teeth extractions. As anyone who's seen a pile of cat vomit will tell you, cats don't really chew their kibble anyways - they mostly swallow it whole. I've done full-mouth extractions on many cats that go on to continue enjoying their kibble-based diets with no complications.

4. Having dental disease can complicate other concurrent health problems

Having dental disease can complicate other concurrent health problems

Significant dental disease results in a large amount of bacteria in the mouth. That bacteria can move into the bloodstream, where it has the potential to set up shop in the liver, kidneys, and heart, compromising function there and sometimes causing infection.

Cats with diabetes are notoriously hard to regulate if they have concurrent dental disease. Their blood sugar seems to stay high despite what would otherwise be large doses of insulin. Often once dental disease is appropriately addressed, diabetic cats don't need such large doses of insulin.

5. There's no evidence that dry food is better for your cat's teeth than canned food

There's no evidence that dry food is better for your cat's teeth than canned food

No scientific study has proven that cat's (or dog's) teeth stay cleaner on a kibble-based diet. As mentioned previously, cats don't do that much chewing of kibble anyways, so there's very little of that scraping action that we imagine with kibble consumption. In reality even when they do chew the kibble it tends to "shatter" when they crunch down on it.

There are some dental diets that are specially formulated to stay intact when the animal crunches down on the kibble, essentially enveloping the tooth. These do provide some scraping action, and studies show that these foods, namely the t/d diet from Hill's, do reduce plaque and tartar buildup.

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