When you watch the domestic cat eating food you might think that they use their incisor teeth to grab food and then push it back to their premolars to masticate it into a form where it can be swallowed. But you would be mistaken. The domestic cat’s wild cat ancestor evolved dentition which is …
It is more difficult to work out a domestic cat’s age from appearance than it is to do the same thing with humans. Normally, most people can work out a human’s age from appearance to within 5-10 years, which as a percentage of their lifespan is about 10%. To hit that target for cats …
To almost everyone except veterinarians, this is a very unusual cat photograph. It shows the closed mouth and the nose of a tortoiseshell cat with a tooth protruding from the upper jaw into the opening of the right nostril. And if you look to the right of the picture there appears to be two …
A cat owner on the Reddit.com website (user u/maifoothurts) asked whether young cats lose their baby teeth. The question was accompanied by a pretty stark photograph which you can see below of a canine tooth which had snapped off and come to rest on the living room floor. The answer is yes. See the …
This is a square infographic which illustrates five barriers to domestic cat success. As I state, this is not a criticism of cat domestication. It is realisation that barriers exist. We are two very different species with a lot in common despite the barriers. All five can result in problems in the human-to-cat relationship, …
This is one of those moot topics. It is very difficult if not impossible sometimes to even look at the interior of a domestic cat’s mouth never mind clean the teeth and massage the gums. The vets and experts dish out a lot of advice which is more theoretical than practical. This is why …
This is the advice of Dr Bruce Fogle DVM MRVS, the world’s best-known veterinarian/author. By birth he is Canadian, living in England. “I was born on February 17, 1944 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where I was raised and educated, graduating in 1970 with a DVM degree (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine) from the Ontario Veterinary …
How do you check your cat’s teeth, gums and mouth generally? It’s important to do it but very difficult to carry out. Even using the standard veterinary technique, which I refer to below, many cats are reluctant to have their mouths examined. They might need to be restrained or sedated by a veterinarian. I …
