Courtesy of:  Bethany

As a recent Veterinary Technician student (I just graduated in May, yay me!), I had a lot of interaction with the animals from the local animal shelter. During my first year in the program I had the pleasure of meeting a lovely little feline named ‘Cinder’.  She was just one of many cats without a person to call their own. Who would have predicted the journey before us?

Cinder had been a resident of the local SPCA for almost two years.  The little I know about Cinder’s history is that she had arrived at the shelter with kittens and had been to foster home after foster home, never finding a permanent home and loving family she could call her own.

Cinder was having quite a difficult time in her everyday life; she constantly had a hard time eating, often not eating more than a few bites in a day. It was obvious that she was having some severe issues with her mouth. She was already missing quite a few teeth and had stage 4 periodontal disease. I knew that because of these issues, it would be hard to find anyone who would be willing to take on a case like this and provide her the care she needed.

So, being in the veterinary field I decided that I was qualified enough to take care of this little girl and save her from a life at the shelter.  After paying my adoption fee I took home my new little bundle of joy to introduce her to my other two cats, who I hoped would take to her easily.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t my cats who were the issue.

After I brought her home, Cinder was nowhere to be found! At first I thought her hiding was due to the stress of moving into a new home. I soon discovered she wasn’t hiding due to fear but because she was in constant pain. Eating was almost impossible, even with canned food.  Even trying to yawn would cause her to shriek in pain and go running for the nearest hiding place. In her mind, pain was all around her and no place was safe.

Soon after, she stopped eating entirely for a whole day.  I immediately called up Truro Vet and booked an appointment to have her examined and hopefully come up with a solution to the problem. During this first appointment, Dr. Michelle informed me that Cinder had a serious auto-immune condition and that her quality of life was very poor and that she would quickly decline if something was not done. Knowing I was a student and money was an issue, euthanasia was presented as a viable option since treatment would be so expensive and potentially hard for Cinder to get through.  I couldn’t decide right then and there so I was sent home with some pain medication and antibiotics to help reduce some of the inflammation in Cinder’s mouth and help treat any bacteria that may have been passing through her body due to her dental disease.

For two months I was in denial about the seriousness of Cinder’s condition and kept going with the antibiotics in a futile attempt to avoid the needed treatment. What was the treatment you ask? Treatment involved taking out every single tooth left in Cinder’s mouth followed by a lifetime diet of canned food. I felt like I would be an awful person if I did that to my cat!  What kind of life is it without teeth for a cat?

I booked another appointment at Truro Vet and was booked with Dr. Gwen. I simply asked, “Can you explain to me again what the problem is, what the treatment is and what will happen to her if she has the procedure done?”

Cinder had a condition called Feline Oral Resorptive Lesions. Essentially, her body was rejecting her teeth and because of this, her teeth were slowly being reabsorbed into the gums. As a result, this was very painful! Her gums should have been a nice shade of light pink and instead they looked like this:

Ouch! Her gums were swollen, red and painful and even though she didn’t have an overly large amount of tarter or plaque, that didn’t matter in this case. With this condition, often it is so painful that even under surgical anesthesia, when the animal is supposed to be completely asleep, touching their gums can elicit a pain response. It’s not really understood exactly why this disease happens, only that it is an auto-immune condition.

On x-ray, it became quite obvious how serious the condition was:

Normal x-ray

Cinder’s x-ray

In these x-rays, you can see just how much of her teeth were being eaten away.

When I dropped her off for her surgery that day, I felt so horrible about it I almost wanted to cry. I couldn’t believe that all her teeth were about to be removed and her life would completely change. I got the call later that day that she had sailed through surgery with no complications and was resting comfortably. She stayed the night and I arrived the next day to pick up my kitty, feeling guilty as ever.

Joye, one of Truro Vet’s Vet Techs, came into the room to instruct me on how to care for Cinder at home and the first thing she told me was that after Cinder woke up, Joye had offered her some canned food to see if she would be interested and she ate the WHOLE THING! She ate all of the food she was offered without any indication she was in pain, only the indication that she was starving. I almost immediately stopped feeling guilty because even though her gums had been cut open, her teeth removed and her gums sewn back up, she was doing so much better that she was actually able to eat for the first time in days.

We continued the antibiotics for a few more weeks and I watched as Cinder changed into a completely different cat: she no longer hid for hours during the day, in fact she’s quite the cuddle bug (who knew?!) and now she can yawn comfortably without any pain whatsoever.

Who would have known that when I agreed to give this little girl her forever home that we would go through so much in such a short time? I was faced with the harsh reality of having to choose to spend a lot of money on her or decide to end her suffering permanently and say goodbye.

I know some people would probably say, ‘It’s just a cat, what’s the big deal?’ but I couldn’t imagine having made the choice to say goodbye to Cinder that day. She has become a permanent fixture in my household and has the most amazing personality that I have ever seen in a pet. She is on a diet of reduced calorie canned food to prevent her from gaining too much weight, although she still enjoys stealing hard food kibbles out of her housemates’ dishes. Despite having no teeth, she eats more hard food now than she did when she had them!

With the support of my veterinary team (who I now have the pleasure of working with as well) I was able to make this decision and trust their capable hands to care for my little girl and help her become the lovely cat she is today. And every time someone asks me why I put my cat through that, all I can say is that it turned her into the cat she was supposed to be from the very beginning.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding dental care for your pet, please call the Truro Veterinary Hospital at (902) 893–2341.