Hi
My cat, who is 12 years old, recently stopped eating normally so I took her to the vet. The vet discovered abscess under her jaw on the right side and diagnosed her with tooth infection. He also took some puss out with a syringe and gave her some antibiotics. He wants me to go back and have some of her teeth taken out. This is going to be a procedure under general anesthetic, so he also needs to test her blood in order to see if she has any organ problems.

I am not convinced about this diagnosis as all he did was to touch her jaws and take the puss out. I was expecting at least a thorough examination or maybe an x-ray to determine the damage caused by this infection. Therefore, I want to ask other cat owners if they ever encountered this issue and if taking the teeth out was the only solution to this problem.
Thanks.

If the abcess is inside the jawbone, the infection is most likely to originate in the root of the tooth, and if not, it is the jawbone itself. Either way, the tooth will be causing pain, preventing him from eating.
If it is seperate from the jawbone, there may be a different cause. Does your cat fight with other cats? A bite or claw wound may also cause an abcess.....

I had several cats with tooth infections, and taking out the affected teeth worked wonders. My Ricky lost 4 teeth in one go, and he is wolfing down his food again. Catweazle had 2 teeth taken out a couple of years ago, and gaind all the weight he lost, and more (which in his case was a shame, as he was rather overweight before his tooth problems started).

I once had a rabbit with an abcess in the jaw, caused by a degenerative infection of the marrow. There was no real cure for it, it is rather common in rabbits of a certain age, but some teeth had to come out anyway, in order to relieve the pressure and pain, and to gain access to the area.

They mamaged to stop the process temporarily, but it did come back, like the vet predicted. But if we had not removed the teeth at that stage, he would have starved to death, because of the pressure on his teeth caused by the abcess, which must have hurt quite a lot.

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Jiskefet & the mognificent Dutch bunch

My little angels at the rainbow bridge

Thanks so much for your detailed, informative reply. My cat, Bella, is usually very placid. She never fights with other cats, although if she meets a belligerent neighbour she can defend herself.

You raised some really important issues for me, i.e. what is really infected there? Is it the jaw bone or the root of the tooth? And that is what I have to ask the vet again.

There is one more thing I wanted to ask; my vet has asked me for nearly £320 for extracting the teeth and a blood test. Did you pay this kind of money for teeth extraction for your cats?

No, but I am not in the UK, so prices may be different over here. I paid 200 euros for having 4 teeth removed, and that was without a blood test.

But if the jawbone around the tooth is infected, the tooth is likely to be affected, anyway, and it will probably need to come out in order to treat the inflammaton of the jaw properly.

But I think you should get a clear insight into what is wrong. If you want to be sure, you might want to have an X-ray taken, though that will cost extra, of course. But it will give the extra information you want.

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Jiskefet & the mognificent Dutch bunch

My little angels at the rainbow bridge

By the way, lab tests tend to be expensive, if they cannot be performed at the clinic itself. If the sample has to be sent out to a lab, it will cost you.

I once had a lymph node removed from one of my cats, and I took it to the lab, myself. That's the advantage of working in pathology, I simply made the slides, myself, and showed them to a pathologist. No cost, and I had the results within days instead of weeks.

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Jiskefet & the mognificent Dutch bunch

My little angels at the rainbow bridge