When it comes to keeping feline pets healthy and happy, cat dental care is one of the important things that need to be taken care of. The oral health of a pet plays a vital role in maintaining their overall health in check and improving the quality of the pet’s life. The oral health of a pet includes clean teeth, gums, including other parts of the mouth.
Most of the time, it is often wondered, pets don’t require professional dental care. However, this is not true. While there are some dental cat treats available in the market that claims to provide proper oral care to pets, professional dental cleaning is also required for maintaining proper dental health.
Do cat dental treats are enough to maintain their oral health? How to maintain cat dental care? Should one require professional dental cleaning for cats? And similar other questions come from every pet parent while discussing the dental care of cats.
Why Cats Require Regular Dental Care?
Bad breath is one of the most common complaints that pet parents often worry about. Bad breath in pets is considered a big reason why regular professional dental cleaning and examining are required. It is found that some cats suffer from serious dental issues with growing age like inflammation, bleeding gums, and sometimes that even results in tooth loss. One of the common reasons for these dental issues is plaque and tartar buildup in the cat’s mouth.
If these dental issues remain untreated, they may result in serious intricacies like tooth loss, mouth infection, bone decay near teeth, abscess, and even cause fractures of the jaw. Periodontal diseases nowadays have become very common in pets. It is found that 70% of cats suffer from periodontal disease around the age of 2 years old. Due to stuck food particles in the jaws and teeth, plaque formation is seen in teeth if remains untreated it results in inflammation of tissues in the teeth and gums.
This untreated plaque results in the formation of tartar that results in serious mouth infections causing damage to tissues and even bad breath in pets. These serious periodontal diseases in cats may lead to severe pain that sometimes makes it impossible for cats to eat anything. This inflammation and bleeding gums becomes a pathway for bacteria to enter the heart or kidney through the bloodstream which may lead to serious health issues.
Thus, to prevent pets from such severe health issues, maintaining proper oral health is very crucial. This can easily be attained by regularly brushing your pet’s teeth and regular professional dental cleaning to make sure that your pet has a clean mouth to avoid dental health issues that may even lead to scary consequences affecting other parts of the body in pets.
What are the stages of dental diseases in pets?
There is a total of four stages of dental diseases found in pets. Thus, it is recommended to regularly visit professionals for dental cleaning of cats to protect them from any serious health issues that may cause due to poor dental care.
There are four stages of dental disease that are found in cats:
Stage I: Gingivitis – It can be noticed as inflamed and swollen gums with mild plaque covering the cat’s teeth.
Stage II: Early periodontitis – In this, moderate inflamed and swollen gums are found with bad breath from the pet’s mouth.
Stage III: Moderate periodontitis – If your pet is suffering from this, one may notice infection and calculus dominating the gum by not only bad breath but a painful mouth due to which pets might even avoid eating.
Stage IV: Advanced periodontitis – In this, chronic bacteria are found to destroy gum and spread throughout the body which may even lead to serious health issues.
How To Promote Dental Health At Home?
There is no alternative to regular brushing for maintaining proper cat dental care. However, when it comes to brushing cats’ teeth, it becomes tough as cats don’t allow or even like to brush their teeth. Sometimes it seems next to impossible to brush cats’ teeth as per the cat’s mood or they don’t allow to brush their teeth even after treating or playing with them. In that case, dental chew treats for cats and cat teeth cleaning treats play a crucial role in keeping cats’ teeth clean and fresh.
Dental treats for cats are made with such materials that create biting textures when cats chew them. These biting textures help in removing tartar and plaque buildup from the cat’s teeth. Thus, helping in providing clean and healthy teeth. These dental cat treats are available in different flavors, materials, sizes, and different textures that cats chase to have. These different flavourful treats help in removing bad breath from cats’ mouths and provide a fresh breath to cats.
However, while feeding these cats dental treats one requires to take care of the calories feeding to pets as cats have different calorie requirements than that humans.
Frequently Asked Questions:
- Are dental cleanings safe for cats?
It is very important to maintain proper dental hygiene in cats. Regular professional dental cleaning is essential to prevent dental diseases in cats as these dental issues may lead to serious other health issues in cats.
- Do cats require dental cleaning?
Dental cleaning is very important for cats as that is important for humans. Stuck food particles result in plaque and tartar buildup in a cat’s teeth that may even lead to bleeding gums or tooth loss. Thus, it is very important to regularly clean a cat’s teeth to maintain proper dental hygiene that will help in maintaining overall health in check.
- Are cat dental treats help in maintaining dental hygiene?
Cat Dental Treats are made with crunchy & biting textures that remove plaque and tartar buildup from the cat’s teeth when chewed. These are available in different flavors that provide fresh and clean breath removing bad breath from the pet’s mouth.
