Okay, so one of my Singapuras, Tenshi , recently had a little minor surgery to extract a few teeth–he had some gum disease and big tartar buildup, so much that it was the only option. He’s doing fine now, thank goodness–he’s completely back to his old self.
However…the dentist has told us that we need to brush his teeth, and once a week we need to spread this waxy stuff on them with an applicator to help seal out some of the gunk so this doesn’t happen again.
Problem is, Tenshi is a very…er…*willful *cat. He only weighs about 9 pounds, but it’s all muscle and pointy ends and stubbornness. And he does *not *like having his teeth brushed. Worse, he’s very smart and apparently psychic, because he can figure out when we’re about to try something with his teeth and he disappears.
I think we can deal with the psychic part, but as far as the actual teeth brushing goes, we haven’t had much success yet. Complicating matters is the fact that he has a heart condition, so we don’t want to stress him out too badly in the process. A little stress is okay, but elevating his heart rate to a huge degree is probably not the best approach. Not to mention that if we make it too awful for him, he’ll just hide more often, and nobody wants that.
Any suggestions on how best to do this? There are two of us, so strategies involving two humans and one cat are most appreciated.
When we started cutting our cats’ claws, some of them resisted striongly. We found that wrapping them in a towel helped. After a while, they got used to the clippinmg, and the towel wasn’t needed.
We’ve brushed our cats’ teeth. Without the towel. But they don’t like it.
Of course, thius just transfers the problem to their not liking being wrapped up in the towel, so they resist that.
Why do you need to brush your cats teeth?
Does his breath smell like cat food?
On Classic FM they’ve been advertising some cat food which takes care of this.
Not anymore! 
Before it smelled not unlike a rancid sewer. But it’s all kitty-fresh now. We want to keep it that way. 
Our vet tells us to brush our cat’s teeth. We don’t do it. I’ll brush her teeth when she picks up a snow shovel or a rake and pitches in. I’m not asking for a lot, but jeez, she won’t even kill spiders. Go ahead, I tell her, it’s your job! It’s the least you can do!
Nooooooo… scratch my belly.
Anytime I need to do anything to my cat that I know she won’t like, I wrap her up tightly in a blanket or a towel. I try to talk to her in the “good-kitty” soothing mommy voice, which keeps her from being TOO scared. And of course she squirms and cries and hates me, but she eventually gives up because I’m bigger and stronger and I’m not actually hurting her.
There are some cats who won’t tolerate this at all, I know. Hopefully yours isn’t one of them.
Discuss this with your vet. If he has a heart condition I am sure the stress of having his teeth brushed will not be good for him. In general I am not a fan of giving sedatives to cats, but this might be one of the cases where it is appropriate. Your vet might have some other ideas.
We were shown how to brush our cat’s teeth recently (I have yet to do it though). Put him on a table, facing away from you, in that crouching position like when they eat. Scratch them under their chin, and use your finger to brush along his teeth… do this several times, whenever the cat is relaxed, and he will eventually get used to it. Add kitty toothpaste (don’t use human stuff!) to your finger, and do it that way, then eventually move up to a baby toothbrush.
Like I said, I haven’t tried it. But the vet seemed pretty confident we wouldn’t get our arms shredded off by our kitty’s claws!
Thanks, everybody! mnemosyne, I think you’ve got the best approach for our particular cat. I tried a variation on that (that I found on a web page) tonight and he seemed to put up with it okay. It helps that one thing he really likes is having his cheek pads rubbed, so I tried to make it enjoyable for him. Just rubbing for now, but getting him used to touching the sides of his mouth. This might just work after all! Thanks!
