My Cat Has No Teeth

Poor Captain Nap. You remember--this guy:

"Why you gotta treat me so bad?"

Capt. Nap is the unfortunate victim of the feline herpes virus. (My gyno SWORE he couldn't catch it from me.) (I'm TOTALLY joking. I didn't ask my gyno.)

Okay, okay. All kidding aside, it was this little minx who gave it to him. Remember the adorable Pepper Anne?

"I'm winking at you because you think I'm healthy, but I have a hilarious secret!"

Yes, the missing-an-eye (so, not winking) Pepper Anne, who we adopted in a moment of weakness, because, you know, she's so damn cute. Anyway, we've had her for nearly a year now, and she's been the cause of:

1. Marital discord
2. Horrific sores in Squeaky's mouth
3. Capt. Nap's full-mouth extraction
4. Plenty o' good times!

Without going into too  much detail (because it involves science and medical terminology I don't really understand), Pepper Anne, who we renamed "Peeper" (get it? One eye?), has this herpes virus, which is what caused her to lose her eye before we adopted her. The other cats, not being all that particular about where/what they eat, snuffled around in the same food bowls and caught the virus from Peeper.

Squeaky was the first victim.

Squeaky guarding her favorite toy from Peeper.

Because she's black, I didn't notice at first that she'd developed a sore under her nose. By the time I saw it, it was bleeding. I raced her to the vet (after a mighty struggle to get her in the carrier), who looked in her mouth and found a bunch of ulcers. We had lots of fun medicating Squeaky! She was quarantined in our bedroom for two weeks, which she seemed to like. A lot. In fact, she still goes in there every day. It's her Peeper-free sanctuary. We finally got her outbreak under control.

That's when I noticed Capt. Nap's breath. It had gone from regular-cat gross to atrocious. As in, he'd open his mouth a crack and I'd want to flee to another house.

The captain is embarrassed that I'm detailing his bad breath.

I raced HIM to the vet. She looked in his mouth and gasped. I'm not joking. She then called in a vet tech, who looked in his mouth and also gasped. She showed me what they were gasping about (surprisingly, not his breath). His gums were an inflamed mess; bright red and sore looking. The herpes virus had manifested itself as something called stomatitis. I nodded somberly, not realizing fully the magnitude of this condition until I got home and googled it. One of the cheering articles was titled, "Cats and Stomatitis: A Condition You Wouldn't Wish on Your Worst Enemy."

So the bottom line was his immune system was rejecting his teeth. Or something like that. The best way to treat a case of stomatitis that was as bad as Capt. Nap's was to remove the worst of his teeth. We started with a dental cleaning and extraction of several teeth, in the hopes that those measures would do the trick. They didn't. Last week, I bundled Capt. Nap into his carrier for the 4,786th time this year and dropped him off at the vet so they could take out ALL of his remaining teeth. It sounds extreme, I know. But I did a lot of reading about it, and talked at length to my vet, and it seems that a full-mouth extraction is often the best way to relieve a cat's suffering. Goodness knows, I didn't want my old friend to suffer.

He's back home now and gobbling his food as if he's in a race. Even dry food! Twice a day I put out canned and dry; usually he makes a beeline for the dry. Go figure.

He's still recovering, but I can tell he feels better. He's grooming himself (something he abandoned before because it was too painful) and even seems more playful. Hooray! It's been a long and challenging year getting Peeper integrated into our household. With the help of Prozac, Squeaky is coming around (although she does get annoyed with Peeper fairly frequently). Also with the help of Prozac,* my husband no longer seems in favor of divorcing me. He did say, however, that three is the ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM.

Also, I was wondering if anyone could lend give me $38,971.95? That's my rough estimate of what I've spent on vet bills this year.

The end. (Get it?)

*J/K about my husband and Prozac. Not j/k about Squeaky and Prozac, though.