Food For Cats With Gingivitis?

[hmckinney]

Hi all!

So I recently found out that Madonna has a bout of gingivitis.
I was thinking of upgrading her food. I got a small bag of IAMS dental care for them to try out, but now that I've been looking at online reviews, a lot of people say IAMS isn't that great.

So, would anyone recommend a food for a cat with gingivitis?

 

[maggiedemi]

Science Diet has a dental care dry food. I'm trying out a bag of it right now to see if it cleans my cats' teeth. I can let you know if it works.

 

[cheesycats]

Brush your cats teeth. I know it’s hard, believe me my female cat will do everything in her power to hurt me during the act but it helps so much. My male has preperiodontal disease and If I go more than a week without brushing his teeth the next time I do his gums have flared up and started bleeding. If I keep at it his gums look really good and don’t bleed at all. My vet just tells me to keep at it for as long as I can. They’re just like people, could you imagine not brushing you’re teeth for 15-20 years or even 1 year for that matter? I also personally don’t believe in dental kibbles simply because if you think about it would you eating something like coco puffs clean your teeth? Most likely not. I also fed greenies for a long time and they didn’t help the matter in the slightest. there are plenty of guides online on how to ease your cat into brushing their teeth. My female still is incredibly combative but I still try a couple times a week. Brushing a little is better than not at all in my opinion.

 

[aolani]

Lani was diagnosed with juvenile gingivitis when she was a kitten. I've been aggressively treating it with dental cleanings and sealant every six months, daily brushings and my vet recommended proplan dental health dry food. Since lani is on a raw diet, I only give her a few kibbles as a treat in the middle of the day. The combination of all of these treatments has worked wonders. I think the size of the kibbles matters most. The kibbles are large enough that she needs to crunch down on them. I very much doubt that giving her the dental diet by itself would be very effective. I personally would recommend a good cleaning at your vet if madonna hasn't had this done already. Just my two cents.

 

[LTS3]

Brush your cats teeth. I know it’s hard, believe me my female cat will do everything in her power to hurt me during the act but it helps so much.

Only regular toothbrushing will help keep the teeth healthy and remove fod particles and plaque, just like it does for your own teeth. Dry food doesn't keep teeeth clean. It's a myth that many people, and even vets, unfortunately believe in.

Does Dry Food Clean the Teeth? | Little Big Cat

Use only pet toothpaste, never Human toothpaste. Most cats hate their teeth being brushed so it will take lots of patience to get your cat to hold still for the few seconds it takes to swipe toothbpaste onto the teeth. Using a yummy flavored toothpaste helps. The CET poultry flavored toothpaste is popular. You won't find it at chian pet stores so you may have to look for it at independent pet stores or just go online to buy it from places like Amazon and pet supply web sites.

 

[hmckinney]

Thank you guys for the input! I think I will try brushing her teeth. I've ordered some of that CET toothpaste and the vet said I could use a toothbrush for babies on them 2-3 times a week until the gingivitis calms down, then once a week.

She's gonna kill me though, RIP me lol.

 

[aolani]

Thank you guys for the input! I think I will try brushing her teeth. I've ordered some of that CET toothpaste and the vet said I could use a toothbrush for babies on them 2-3 times a week until the gingivitis calms down, then once a week.

She's gonna kill me though, RIP me lol.

Just try to get the paste on at first. Since it's enzymatic, just getting it on will help. Please don't brush like you would human teeth, at least not until she becomes accustomed to it. I think she really will try to kill you then.

 

[lisahe]

Thank you guys for the input! I think I will try brushing her teeth. I've ordered some of that CET toothpaste and the vet said I could use a toothbrush for babies on them 2-3 times a week until the gingivitis calms down, then once a week.

She's gonna kill me though, RIP me lol.

If you cat likes the toothpaste, she'll be thanking you! Ours like CET toothpaste (one prefers seafood, the other poultry) so much that it's a treat for them. They had gingivitis and tartar pretty early in their lives, too, (at under 2) so they had a full cleaning and the vet recommended daily brushing. We bought CET kits with brushes and I agree with LTS3 about the brushes: you'll really want that tiny brush so you can work fast. (The vet gave us some odd brushes with very small heads that were designed for humans: one of her clients likes them but the handles were just too long to work well for me with the cats.) aolani is right, too, that you won't be able to get much brushing in, particularly in the beginning. Just getting some toothpaste in the mouth is half the battle. We've been doing this for more than two years now and I consider it a success that I can get a good swipe in on each side of each cat's mouth.

In our experience, the best way to get the gingivitis to calm down is to make the toothbrushing a part of each day. It still flares up every now and then with one of our cats but then I just focus on the problem area and it gets back to normal. Brushing has really helped. Brushing along with getting the cats tested and treated for the Bartonella bacterium, which some vets (including ours) think contributes to gingivitis.

There's a good cat toothbrushing training video on the Cornell Vet School's site: here. Our vet highly recommended it and it was very useful for us when we were getting started. Our cats love the brushes so we were able to work through the steps a little quicker than what the videos suggest.

Good luck!

 

[pipperoo]

My 2 year old cat LOVES the CET toothpaste. she does NOT LOVE getting her teeth brushed, yet she jumps on the bathroom counter every morning for a brushing just to get a taste of that toothpaste. CET also sells a little soft bristle pointed brush that fits her mouth better than a baby toothbrush or small pet toothbrush.

She also gets raw chicken gizzards to gnaw away on. She's fed raw. However she still has gingivitis (mild stomatitis I think) and has to go back for another cleaning. I suspect she will probably have to have extractions.

One word on the dental kibble - my last cat had some gingivitis and the dentist said just use the dental kibble as treats. I didn't think anything of it at the time, and thought I would just feed her that kibble exclusively and her teeth would be fabulous. Wrong. She gained a lot of weight, became diabetic (a few months on insulin, and a transition from dry food to wet and she dropped the weight and her diabetes was reversed) and still ended up having full mouth extractions at age 11.

I do use dental kibble with Pip, but mostly as a training treat, never for a meal.

 

[LTS3]

The CET mini cat toothbrush is great

You can only get it as part of a kit, such as this one with a sample packet of toothpaste or this one with a full sized tube of seafood flavored toothpaste.

CET makes another mini brush that looks like this:

I'm not sure how well this one works. If your cat tends to chew on things, a finger type brush might not be the best.

 

[lisahe]

Wow, I've never seen the mini-toothbrush, thanks for posting that, LTS3 ! One of our cats is a big chewer but that's actually worked to my advantage because she's always interested in having her teeth brushed.