Reno's Ruff Weekend or Our Cats Dental Woes

On Saturday morning Sarah and I noticed that our little ginger cat was drooling. A whole lot. Basically it looked like he had to really long fangs made out of drool. I tried to take pictures but Sarah wouldn’t let me since Reno does spend his days on the Internet and we don’t want him stumbling onto embarrassing pictures of him self on the website. I agree with that, though a part of me wishes I could share the humor of a drooling cat with everyone.

Once we decided he wasn’t rabid we took a look at his teeth, which are a pearly white and in perfect health. The problem is his gums. They are red, inflamed and are causing the little ginger all sorts of pain. It is really quite sad. So I turned to my trusty friend, the Internet, and asked him what we should do. He said a bunch of crap about how it is periodontal desiese and that we needed to take him to the vet (which we where already planning on doing, stupid Internet) it also suggested that we should try brushing his teeth with a q-tip and hydrogen peroxide.

If you can imagine a 12- 14lbs cat with sore gums, getting his gums rubbed with a solution that is not notorious for not hurting you can imagine the fun Sarah and I had. First we got a towel, for wrapping up the kitty, then we got the peroxide and q-tips. Sarah provided a little extra pressure on his front legs, since I didn’t want to get hit in the face.

The brushing of his gums was accompanied by the grating vocal styling’s of Reno, he let us know that we where pissing him off and that it also hurt like hell. Once we where done we released the tiger and he ran about three feet away then stopped and let us pet him, so we assume that it must feel better.

Today we took him to the vet. The vet said that what Reno has is a weird gum disease that cause the gums to get really inflamed and the only real solution is to pull some teeth. We asked a lot of questions about if he will still be able to eat normal food and if there was anything else we need to worry about. He said that he will be able to eat fine and that most cats who are missing some or all of their teeth are the same cats who do the same thing, though they sometimes get nicer because their teeth don’t hurt.

On May 10th, 2007 Reno L. Pepe will be going under the dental drill and having probably half or more of his back teeth removed. This will set us back anywhere from $250 to $600, so unfortunately for everyone we won’t be celebrating summer Christmas again this year.

If you would like to help PayPal [email protected] we will possibly be sending the highest donator one of his teeth.