#forls

You mean something like Mingus?

I can’t actually find much about him other than his pictures, so I’m not sure how old he is or whether he’s been diagnosed with anything, but I can be confident those teeth are real, but he might not get to keep them forever.

Off the top of my head there are two conditions I could think of that might make the upper (maxillary) canine teeth (yes, they’re canine teeth, even if it’s a cat) extrude or hyper-erupt.

Maxillary canine tooth extrusion is positively associated wit Feline Oral Resorptive Lesions, and will histologically have evidence of resorptive lesions themselves in cats with other FORLs. The root of the tooth appears to be modified over time, adding cementum and pushing it away from otherwise normal bone.

Alveolar Osteitis, often associated with peridontal disease, can cause the canine teeth to hyper-errupt.

So those teeth will potentially keep elongating over time, not because they are growing, but because they are being pushed out. And that might cause acute distress for the cat in the future, if they suddenly find themselves unable to close their mouth adequately because something is stuck.

I’ve seen this present as acute distress a couple of times, and found the canine teeth weirdly easy to remove. I’m not certain whether the canine teeth themselves cause pain, but affected cats often have other dental disease.

But I can’t speculate any further for a cat I’ve not examined. I’m sure the cat’s actual owners are aware of his teeth.

Mate, if I could tell you exactly why autoimmune disease develops, I’d probably have a Nobel prize and a million dollars.

Best we can tell in cats, is that it’s one of the quirks of the species that some cats, and it may be up to 50% of cats if they live long enough, have an immune system that overreacts to antigenic stimulus (infection, calculus etc) on the teeth and at the gum line. You can get very exaggerated immune responses (eg plasmacytic-lymphocytic gingivitis) and even Feline Odontoclastic Resorptive Lesions (FORLs), where cells are stimulated to dissolve the tooth, or the ligament holding the tooth in place.

Sometimes removing the antigenic stimulus (regular teeth cleaning, low allergen diets) and cortisone or immunosuppresants help, but a lot of the time we end up removing most or all of the teeth. Then there’s nothing for the immune system to bother with, and the cats live happily ever after.

I’ve played a little mouseguard, but mostly I used to play D&D 3.5 edition. I haven’t done that in a long time though.

FORLs (Feline Odontoclastic/Oral Resorptive Lesions) are a quirk of cats, and have been identified radiographically on Egyptian mummified cats, so you can’t reasonably claim it’s a consequence of the modern pet lifestyle. It’s been around for a long time, and I don’t have any really satisfactory answers for why they occur. I can tell you they do fricking hurt when present.

They are kind of weird. There are odontoclasts involved, which dissolve the tooth at the gum line, and then it’s replaced by a cementum-like substance. These are a bugger to extract once they’re cemented in, and one of my least favorite types of dentals.

So I’ve written about Feline Oral Resorptive Lesions before, and it’s worth checking out that post. Once those lesions are present, as they basically dissolve the tooth at the gum margin, removing the affected teeth is the only realistic treatment.

Regular scaling and dental care might help slow it down, but once the tooth is eroding, it really needs to just go.

Peridontal disease is a completely different condition, and it’s primarily treated with dental hygiene, including both at home dental care and scaling.

It’s also very difficult to distinguish between the two if there is a lot of calculus on the teeth, as it physically obscures the tooth. If we suspect there might be FORLS present, we often get the cat in for a scale and a proper investigation once they’re under anaesthetic. That’s also the only time  you can get decent dental Xrays to diagnose FORLS early.