One of the things is, early in life, trying to get cats accustomed to touching their mouth and lifting their lip up. Those are some things that can be helpful. If that acclimation to teeth brushing has not been done prior, you can always try to give them a treat or something afterwards, making it a rewarding procedure.

The best thing to do is to brush the cat's teeth as often as you can. Every day is ideal, but as often as you can is certainly a good goal to achieve.

Extractions are necessary if there are abscesses, if the tooth is fractured with exposure to the pulp cavity, or if there's bone loss involving one of the roots. Usually, a tooth needs to be extracted if there's more than 50% of bone loss.

The initial oral exam, done without anesthesia, helps us determine if a dental cleaning under anesthesia is needed. So, a follow-up appointment would usually be required for this purpose.

X-rays help us to evaluate below the gum line, which is often where the disease process occurs. They allow us to check for bone loss and bad roots. Sometimes a tooth may have multiple roots and it may feel solid but there's actually a bad root, which would necessitate the removal of that tooth.

Dogs can experience a variety of dental and oral problems, including broken teeth and the presence of masses in their mouth. Sometimes, the gingiva can overgrow and they can develop pocketed abscesses, which can lead to infection and very bad odor.

A healthy dog's mouth should have white teeth, and its gums should be pink but not red. Moreover, it should be free of all masses.

During a dog's dental oral exam, we are looking for any fractures of teeth. We also conduct probing with instruments to see if there's any pocketing around teeth. Additionally, we evaluate if any teeth are loose and check for the presence of any tumors or other abnormalities in the mouth.

A change in your cat's behavior can oftentimes indicate something is amiss. Keep in mind that the seasons change and all those, but let's say for example your cat's hiding and then crying. You've probably got an underlying litter box issue that you don't even know about and the cat is manifesting his issue with that that way. The reason that that happens is because if a kitty doesn't want to go to the litter box, he or she is not going to use the litter box, which is either going to result in them A. peeing on your dirty laundry or your bed or in your closet or somewhere where it's at least relatively clean. Or they're gonna simply hold it until they can't take it anymore. That's how bacterial infections happen.

Kneading and hunting are absolutely normal behaviors because first of all cats are carnivores. I mean we don't feed them like they're carnivores but cats in fact are carnivores. They're not designed to live on anything other than small furry woodland creatures. Kneading is a leftover, almost like a thumb-sucking kind of thing, leftover from being a kitten. What kneading does is that encourages breast milk to flow. And so if a kitty is feeling good and groovy with you, they're gonna make biscuits. Think of it as getting a big hug from mom. That's why they do that.