Dental health is very important for a cat. If you brush your teeth regularly, you have a greater chance of keeping your teeth as you get older. Otherwise, a cat who practices poor dental hygiene may be at risk for dental disease. Over 70% of cats over the age of 3 already have signs of gum disease. This is a story about my harrowing experience with a dental cleaning.

There are few things that I won’t eat, but between the months of December and February I developed a toothache so bad that I just couldn’t eat anything anymore. In all, I lost two pounds during the winter and now I have a much trimmer physique. So, I scheduled a trip to the friendly dentist (veterinarian) for a cleaning. I thought that this would just be a routine procedure. After all, my humans go twice a year to get their teeth scraped and they said they didn’t even have to sleep through the procedure.

Initially, it just seemed like a routine. I quietly walked into my carrier and sat through the trip to the veterinarian, patiently held still while they prepped my arm by shaving it for an IV. My human left me there, confident that the veterinarian had all of my medical history available and would be capable to take care of any situation that arose.

A few hours later, I woke up in the veterinary ward, shivering my little bones off. Apparently, while I was out, the veterinarian forgot to look over my chart one more time to make sure that I was in good health. He totally forgot that I have a collapsed lung lobe! Since he was one of the veterinarians who has seen me recently, you’d think he would have remembered.

When I sleep, I usually get up and change sides frequently in order to compensate for comfort and, you know, the ability to breathe. Even though I had lost over two pounds since December, I am still a pretty hefty guy. If I lay on one side too long, my good lung can’t keep up with the pressure and eventually I start running out of air. I was hoping that the veterinarian would have remembered to turn me over often enough just like I do at home, but he completely forgot. When he noticed that I wasn’t getting much air, he panicked and called in a bunch of other doctors, including the specialist who he sent me to with the collapsed lung in the first place. They managed to revive me, of course, but I had a really hard time recovering from being oxygen deprived for so long. I had to spend the night in the hospital. All I remember is being completely exhausted, cold, and really out of it. One of my humans visited me, but I couldn’t really tell him how glad I was to see a familiar face.

The good news (besides that I survived) is that they did some dental x-rays while I was “out” and they found the tooth that was causing me trouble, and they removed it. They also cleaned my teeth so that I won’t have so much trouble with the other teeth from now on. I think this is my third tooth I’ve had removed.

My humans were feeding me a diet of delectable veal at every meal while I had bad teeth, and this did continue for some time during and after my recovery. In fact, I was able to play the “my mouth hurts” card for nearly a month after I had my tooth removed. Then I got bored of the veal and knocked my dish on the floor, scattering the veal all over the floor. Instead of getting me a different entreé, the pathetic woman simply cleaned it up and stopped feeding me veal. Now I’m stuck eating the dry kibble of the commoners of this household. At least I can chew it now.

The moral of this story is, do not think of any procedure requiring anesthesia as simply routine! Your life can be at risk during any surgery, and that’s why your humans have to sign their names on stacks of paper every time they agree to put your life in a veterinarian’s hands. It isn’t for their health, that’s for sure!

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