This page simply sets out, as clearly as possible, information about cat’s teeth. We are all very aware of a cat’s teeth whether they belong to one of the big cats or one of our cat companions. They look impressive. Some people are a little frightened of them, I think. This may sometimes cause people to behave nervously with a cat, a mood which is picked up by the cat and may make it use those teeth!
Cats have shortened faces with less space for teeth. They have fewer teeth than other carnivores – usually 28 or 30, compared to 42 for bears and dogs.
The cat has two sets of teeth during its lifetime. Twenty-six deciduous teeth (baby or milk) begin to “erupt” at about 21 days of age1. With rare exceptions kittens are born without teeth4. They are fully grown by 5 to 6 weeks of age and the different types of teeth erupt at different times allowing age to be determined4(see below). At 4 months of age the thirty permanent teeth begin to show. These are complete by about 6 months of age. Cat teeth follow the general pattern that is found in most carnivores. A cat’s teeth tear flesh like serrated blades. A wild cat’s teeth are cleaned as they scrape over the bones of prey.
It is thought that dry cat food (dry kibble) can play a similar role for the domestic cat4 but others disagree6 describing it as “designer” food6. A majority of experts would agree that a properly prepared homemade raw dietwith ground bone is the answer to natural cat teeth health. Both the upper and lower jaws have:
- incisor teeth – function: grooming and tearing prey1 (and to grasp it as well3)
- canine teeth – function: grasping and killing prey
- premolar teeth – function: shearing, cutting up and chewing food
- molar teeth – function: shearing cutting up and chewing prey (or cat food if it is the domestic cat)
The picture below shows these teeth and the chart immediately below shows the number on the upper and lower jaws. When the jaw is closed the canine teeth interlock and the lower incisors rest just in front of the upper incisors. The molars are behind the incisors and premolars. The small incisors are for holding and nibbling. The canines are for stabbing and killing (breaking the vertebrae of prey).
The last upper molar on the top jaw and the lower molar together makes up the “carnassial teeth” (the large teeth found in many carnivorous mammals, used for shearing flesh and bone in a scissor or shear-like way5). These provide the shearing action that cuts food into pieces before swallowing. You can see your cat use these when he or she has to cut up a particularly tough piece of food. There are relatively few molars1.
Montage above: photos above by Jeremy Burgin (skelton) and thian_un (live cat). Both published under a creative commons license. Montage by MikeB.
Cat Teeth – Medical Information
Cat teeth can be chipped and broken or lost in fights with other cats. Dental problems in domestic cats are sometimes due to diet4. In fact, it is believed that dental and periodontal (gum) health is important to the rest of the body as bacteria from infected gums can spread to other organs of the body in the blood stream6. It is wise for a cat keeper to inspect their cat’s teeth regularly to check for basic health issues and if possible, to train your cat to accept brushing of teeth6. Veterinary cleaning under anesthetic might be required. Cleaning teeth without anesthetic is considered impractical6. Placing a cat under a general anesthetic carries a risk of injury or rarely death (1 in 100 or 1 in a 1,000 – ask you vet before requesting this procedure). See also:
- Bad Breath in Cats
- Cat Teeth Cleaning [link]
- Cat Teeth Neck Lesions
- Denal Gel For Cats
- Feline Gingivitis
There may be some soreness during teething4. This may affect apparent appetite. Sometimes baby teeth are “retained”. Usually, baby teeth are reabsorbed when the permanent teeth replace them. If not, then the permanent teeth are pushed out of alignment when they erupt causing a bad bite. When that happens the baby tooth that remains should be pulled out4. Sometimes cats have an abnormal number of teeth. If there are too few there are no health issues. If too many it may cause overlap and twisting of teeth requiring extraction. Incorrect bite: mostly inherited due to jaw growth or retained baby teeth. Overshot bite means that the upper jaw is longer than the lower. The undershot bite is the opposite. There is a third cause of incorrect bite: wry mouth caused by one side of the jaw growing faster than the other. The flat faced Persians (“ultra” Persian) tend to have more incorrect bites than other purebred cats.
Telling a Cat’s Age from their Teeth
In the wild the amount of wear on the cusps of the teeth can be a reliable guage of age. As domestic cats rarely use their teeth for grinding there is little wear but the general condition of the teeth and gums provide indications of age. For young cats accurate determinations of age are possible as the baby teeth erupt at different times4:
| Cat Teeth | Age they erupt |
| Incisors (baby) | 2 – 3 weeks |
| Canines (baby) | 3 – 4 weeks |
| Premolars (baby) | 3 – 6 weeks |
| Incisors (permanent) | 3 – 4 months |
| Canines (permanent) | 4 – 6 months |
| Premolars and molars | 4 – 6 months |
 The above picture shows the mouth of a kitten (Ivanhoe) aged just over 5 months (23 weeks). His permanent upper left canine has started breaking through and behind it the baby canine is still in place. A few days later it had fallen out by itself – photo by Finn Frode (Ivanhoe lives with Finn…) | |
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My 8 mo old Scottish fold straight has a crooked lower jaw. One canine outside of his mouth. Has made a callous on his upper lip. His small teeth in the front not straight and looks like another one coming in Back of them . What should I do. He eats ok.
I wonder if the crooked jaw is a result of the genetic deficiency which causes the folded ears? It is not strictly relevant. My gut feeling is that if your cat is healthy and eating well then the condition that you describe is not important. It appears to be an anatomical deformity which happen sometimes. The most famous anatomical deformity amongst all cats is the face of Grumpy Cat. When cat breeders get it wrong they sometimes breed cats with malformed jaws. This can be due to inbreeding. Like I say if your cat is healthy and eating well then I would suggest that you accept it. In any case there is little that can be done about it as far as I can see. I am not a veterinarian. Thanks for commenting, Julie. Best of luck.
My Maine coon started drooling intensively. He’s 2 years old. Hes eating and drinking well. It happens mostly when he sleeps. We’re talking a lot of drool. Why?
Hi Deborah. I have a page on cat drooling:
https://pictures-of-cats.org/cat-drooling.html
It may assist. Your cat is young. Sometimes drooling is not a symptom of ill-health. It might be a characteristic of the cat. However, you say it is intense. It can’t be about poor oral health. An underlying disease is a possibility. Or perhaps a foreign body in the mouth. But my gut feel is that your cat is healthy and his drooling is just the way he is. I am guessing big time though.
My adult cats one canine is a quarter inch longer than the other. It is turning dark grey in color near the gum line. What is going on?
Hi Arlene. Sorry I don’t know what is going on. I have to be honest with you. I’ll check and if I find an answer I’ll leave another response. Thanks for commenting.
Thanks for any info as I have a beloved rescue kitten and he/Binx seems to be missing his bottom teeth. Doesn’t stop him from eating his food, or chewing on things-like me-but it was his chewing that concerned me. He likes to chew on my baby finger and sometimes he sounds like he is sucking. He was a pretty sick boy when we got him, but definitely not now and wondered if this was a cause of the missing teeth. He does have his canines.
Hi Julie, it sounds like he lost his teeth as you suggest when he was a sick boy. Is a rescue cat and was he rescued after a tough life? If that is the case it would probably explain loss of teeth. He may have had very poor dental health and a vet removed his teeth. Then he was adopted by you. Just a wild guess. We know that vets often remove teeth when dealing with feline oral health issues.
MY 5 MONTH OLD KITTEN’S LEFT UPPER CANINE IS COMPLETELY SIDE WAYS AND COVERING ONE OR
TWO OF HIS TOP TEETH.
WONDERING IF THIS UPPER CANINE TOOTH WILL JUST FALL OUT OR SHOULD BE EXTRACTED.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ANY INFO YOU GIVE ME.
MARILYNE
Hi Marilyn, it seems to be a retained baby tooth that needs now to be extracted as it has not disappeared of its own accord. I’d see a vet asap as it may cause long term problems. Good luck and thanks for visiting.
My kitten (roughly 5 months) was crunching and pawing at his mouth the other day. I was alarmed when the tooth that fell out looked like a row of teeth. Although having looked on your website I can now see that the premolars are a ‘point’ with a small point either side. It was a good picture to refer to, so thank you for that.
Yes, the teeth are serrated as they shear the flesh as opposed to masticating it. Technical stuff 😉 Thanks for visiting and commenting Sarah.
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Why the hell are you spamming Google.com ! 😉 I find that bizarre in the extreme.
Michael,
Do you know what the largest domestic cat canine teeth size is? My cat has canines that measure 2/3 of an inch from the gums.
I was just curious if you had any insight into the record for feline canine tooth size, because I have not found another domestic cat with teeth of this size, excluding servals.
Thank you,
Chaz
Awesome is all I can say! 😉 I have not discussed canine tooth length except when writing about the sabre tooth tiger. Your cat comes close….! I might do something on this. It is an interesting and fun cat topic. Thanks for sharing.
My cat is huge about 20 lbs or more and his teeth are bigger than this. Is this normal or is there something wrong. He doesn’t scratch he is a biter and he bites to take down the kill but is an inside cat! He stalks us sometimes. He is a huge orange and white male.
Hi Kyla. Your cat is indeed very large. Therefore his teeth are probably longer than normal. There is no definitive, proscribed length for cat teeth including of course the canine teeth at the front and sides. When I’m saying is that a cat’s teeth can vary in length within certain limits. Indeed, my girlfriend looks after a small black cat who has very long canine teeth on her upper jaw which are very noticeable when her mouth is closed. They are exceptionally long but quite normal. Your cat has long, noticeable teeth too. The probably look a bit intimidating 😉 .
I have an 18 month old male, Russian Blue (Marshall) that is very similar in size to Kyla’s kitty (Nov 2015). He’s not 20 pounds (yet!) but 15 pounds. We got him at five months old and know very little of his past. He was constantly, literally sinking his teeth into our hands/arms. After acquiring another, older/smaller/female cat (Lilly) we concluded that he was playing. She’s about five or six and can take him down, but sometimes she’s more passive and he gets the best of her. I worry about him harming her. He gets her by the neck. I haven’t found any damage to her skin but sometimes she loses a tuft of hair. Before he attacks her, he cries out in the same way he would before he attacked me. If I’m nearby, I try to deter him by saying, “Mashall, play nice” and sometimes he will back off. His cry is scary sounding! Should I be concerned?
Hi Londa. I think if I was in your shoes I’d be asking the same question. He is a bit too aggressive for me. It looks like he has not learned the boundaries of play. I believe the rough play will subside. But it would be nice to try and train him to play more gently. I think it can be quite hard to achieve that.
Martin Stucki formerly of A1 Savannahs said that his kittens learned to moderate their play and understand their limits by the reaction of the recipient cat who’d complain. My cat has been too rough on me sometimes. I simply retaliate and play rougher on him. This stops him. I was my way of training him. But I am not sure it is the best way. My conclusion is (a) he has not learned the limits of play or (b) he is genuinely aggressive and this could be a territorial thing. I wrote a page about that recently.
https://pictures-of-cats.org/why-do-cats-leave-home.html
Best of luck.
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Hello I really would like to know what I should do. My cat has only two incisors in the upper part of his mouth, and he’s missing all of them on the bottom. Do you think that they will come back or should we take him to the vet?
Hello Camille. Thanks for commenting. I am presuming that your cat is an adult cat. And if he’s lost his teeth then he has lost his teeth and that is that. They won’t grow back. When a kitten loses his baby teeth then they are replaced by adult teeth but that appears not to be the case in this instance. I would be interested to know how your cat lost his teeth. Assuming he is an adult cat then, as I see it, the only way he could lose his incisors on the lower jaw is because they have been broken off or worn by wear and tear but that would seem to be highly unusual. Perhaps they fell out because he has poor oral health. Would you mind leaving another comment to tell us what you think might have happened. If he is kitten don’t worry.
He is an adult male cat. He likes to mount another male cat and they go back and forth taking turns.
I am thinking back to where he likes to sleep which is up on top of our armoire. One day he rolled off and fell but he seemed to be alright. I have recently started noticing after he grooms himself his tongue laps strangely.
If he has a broken jaw could this be the reason? He still eats fine.
Please advise
Camille