Dental anatomy of cats
What does a cat dental involve?
After the mouth is evaluated and diseased teeth noted on your cat's medical chart, tooth scaling will be performed, using both hand and ultrasonic scalers, to remove tartar above and below the gum line.
The tartar below the gum line causes the most significant periodontal disease, so its removal is important..
What is the dental formula for cats?
Dental formulas (upper number indicates the maxillary teeth, lower number the mandibular teeth): The deciduous dental formula for kittens is 2 x (I3/I3, C1/C1, P3/P2) = 26 teeth.
The permanent dental formula for adult cats is 2 x (I3/I3, C1/C1, P3/P2, M1/M1) = 30 teeth..
What is true about all cats teeth?
Kittens are born with 26 milk teeth which are replaced by 30 by the time they are an adult cat.
Cats are true carnivores so their teeth are highly evolved to help them to hunt, kill and eat prey.
They are also an aid to self-defence and a tool for grooming..
- The mouth will have smaller incisors, slender and strongly curved upper canines, vertical lower canines, and even smaller upper and lower molars.
Although the upper and lower molars are smaller than the ones that arise during permanent dentition, the similarities are striking. - While cats are also born without teeth, it only takes them until they are around 3 months old for their permanent teeth to begin to erupt.
They also have more baby teeth than humans at 26 while we only have 20 baby teeth and cats only have 30 adult teeth while humans have more at 32. - Your kitten's adult teeth started out as tooth buds seated in the bone of her jaw.
As they grow and develop, they will push through the bone and gum tissue to erupt into the mouth.
While the deciduous teeth should push out easily, the adult teeth retain roots that connect them to your cat's jaw.
Adult cats have 30 teeth- 12 incisors (6 on top and 6 on bottom), 4 canine teeth (2 top and bottom), 10 pre-molars (6 top and 4 on the bottom), 4 molars (2 top and bottom) Puppies and kittens can start teething at 4 months of age and usually have their full set of adult teeth come in by 6 months of age.
Cats have 30 teeth. At 3.5 months old, a kitten’s deciduous teeth begin to erupt. There are 26 of these “baby teeth”
Feline disease are those infections or diseases that infect cats.
Some of these cause symptoms, sickness or the death of the animal.
Some of these are symptomatic in a cat but not in other cats.
Some are opportunistic and tend to be more serious in cats that already have other sicknesses.
Some of these can be treated and the animal can have a complete recovery.
Others, like viral diseases, cannot be treated with antibiotics.
This is because antibiotics are not effective against viruses.
