Plum In Recovery

Poor Plum had dental surgery on January 21^st and it turned out they were not able to salvage a single tooth.  At first our vet was thinking she could leave him with two teeth, but alas! they were too far gone.  After a very long surgery, we were able to pick Plum up at 8:00 that night and bring him home all conked out on pain meds and looking half dead.

He pretty much stayed that way for the next 24 hours – he looked miserable, and he lay around my bathroom (where we had secluded him with many comfy beds and food and water) with a truly awful smell emanating from every pore.  At first we thought he was urinating everywhere, because the smell was so bad, but I think it was just fear and pain and pheromones.

Poor guy.  To make matters worse, we had pain meds that we needed to squirt in his mouth, without touching his mouth or lips or gums in any way.  That is, the meds could touch all those places, but we weren’t allowed to pull his lips back to get the meds in, or to touch his upper or lower jaws.  We had some luck the morning after the surgery, but after that it was IMPOSSIBLE to do.  We ended up having to go back to the vet and get some pain meds that we could put directly in his food.

By Friday he seemed to have turned a corner, and by the weekend he was purring up a storm.  Part of the reason why we were doing the surgery in the first place was because the vet had said he would feel so much better, even without teeth, and we would notice a difference right away.  (She also said that his spraying issues were almost without a doubt a result of his mouth pain, and that the behavior would stop once his mouth no longer hurt him.  It did not.  We got a shelf from Ikea to hold some of Owen’s toys, and a few days later Plum sprayed the shelf.  Sigh).  And I have to say that I do notice a difference in mood.  Partly in how often and loudly he purrs now, but he is also much more up and about and getting into mischief and talking and scolding and whatnot.

So now Plum can no longer have dry cat food, and we have to buy twice as many cans of the wet as we did previously.  But Sir Plum is happy!  And always wanting to be picked up and cuddled….so there’s that.

Plum thinking, you thought my mouth would be puckered, didn’t you?

Plum Goes Dental

We are getting ready for Plum’s turn to go under the knife and get his horrendous teeth and gums cleaned up.  We did this for Posy two years ago, and have been putting off doing it for Plum for financial reasons.  But the vet shamed me the other day by calling Plum’s alleged pain “extreme,” and whereas I do still have issues with pet dentistry, I chose Plum to be my pet, he didn’t choose me, and I don’t want any pet in our household to be suffering.  (For the record, we haven’t noticed any suffering—he eats as vigorously and happily as he always has, and indeed has gained an (unneeded) pound in the past year).

The vet thought that some of his other behavioral issues though—spraying and bullying Posy—might stop when his mouth is no longer hurting, and that would be nice if we didn’t have to drug him daily.  We shall see!  Surgery is scheduled for next week and hopefully all we be well.  Except for a tendency to be over-alpha, he is really a nice, affectionate, busybody beastie.

Posy Under the Knife

After four or so years of hemming and hawing, Ms. Posy Fern had dental surgery on Friday.  I’ve long been conflicted about pet dentistry.  My pug, Tulip, did not have the best of teeth, and I did have her teeth cleaned about four or five times in the second half of her life.  Anesthesia is always an extra risk with pets who are brachycephalic—i.e. smushed face animals – though, and over the years pet dentistry seems to have “evolved” from a set-price procedure to a major financial investment.  Leaving aside the fact that we can’t afford it, I have some ethical issues over paying more for my pets’ dentistry than I can afford for my own.

So even though vets have been telling me for the past four years that both my cats had terrible teeth and gum issues, I’d been stalling doing anything about it.  Recently, our new vet – whom I like very much and is a no-nonsense kind of doctor – told us that Posy’s mouth issues were so bad that she was definitely in a lot of pain.  Left untreated, we’d be compromising her quality of life, as well as paving the way for eventual blood poisoning.  She told us both cats needed the procedure, but Posy much more so than Plum.  We finally signed Posy up for surgery and Sean brought her in on Friday, empty-bellied, and somewhat subdued to be taken on this unusual father/daughter adventure.

Once she was under anesthesia and x-rays had been taken, the vet called me to tell me what she planned to do and to get my permission.  Basically, Posy had her “cheek teeth” removed (most were in various states of resorption, a common problem for brachycephalic pets), and then major gum repair done in the places where she had stalagmites but no stalactites, so to speak:  teeth going up or teeth going down with no mirror image above, thus leading to gum carnage with every bite the poor gal made.

The good news is that everything went very well, and the other good news is that it ended up being significantly less expensive than the initial quote.  Posy came home loopy on pain meds, and spent her first thirty-six hours in our guest room suite, where she could be sure to not be bothered by Plum or Dorothy.  Of course, being Posy and being feisty, she spent her second night yowling behind the closed door demanding her freedom.  She purred from the moment she got home though, and ate immediately too—both good signs.  She has yet to clean herself, so I know that she is feeling some mouth pain still, but hopefully she’ll re-start her cleaning OCD in the next day or so.

I was pretty sure she was feeling much better in the wee small hours of the night last night, when I was awakened by Posy playing a mean game of paw hockey with a balled-up candy wrapper all over my bedroom floor.  Thanks, Posy!

Here is Posy Saturday morning, still enjoying the hallucinatory effects of her pain meds:

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius!....