The Saga of Owen; Part One

I adopted Owen when I was in school to become a Veterinary Technician. He was brought in with his brothers, sister, and mom to be examined by the vet at our school. Owen was the smallest of the kittens and the sickest. All of the other kittens were social and played with each other, but Owen just wanted to sleep in the corner.

By the next day, my classmates had adopted all the other kittens. That’s when I decided to adopt Owen (even though I told my mom we were just “fostering” him...). I brought him home and gave him all the TLC I could.

After about 6 months of lots of vet care Owen was finally healthy! Shortly after I started working at Manchester Veterinary Clinic, I brought Owen in because I saw some blood in his saliva and his gums looked pretty red. At the time he had just turned a year old. Dr. B looked at his mouth and saw the gingivitis over his premolars (those chompers behind his canine teeth) and told me that he probably has eosinophilic plasmacytic stomatitis (essentially Owen’s mouth was allergic to his teeth). Unfortunately, this meant that eventually these teeth would need to be removed.

We started him on a supplement called Perio-Support to help with overall oral health, but a couple of months later, his stomatitis was worsening and now his tongue was red and bleeding. My poor baby!!! Dr. B started him on antibiotics and I scheduled the dental procedure for him. The antibiotics did help, but this kind of condition does not get better or stop its progression. It was time to do the extractions I had been warned would be necessary.

The day of the procedure, I admitted him into the hospital, gave him a big kiss, and I left. Since I’m an employee, I could have stayed and observed, but I did not want to be around when my baby was having his procedure done. I am very much a worrier and a paranoid fur-mom, so I thought it best to not work that morning or be present at all. I was scheduled to work in the afternoon and as I was walking up to the building, Dr. B came out to tell me that they had just started Owen’s surgery. My plan had backfired! Thankfully I was assisting one of the doctors in appointments, so I was pretty busy, but I still obsessively checked in on Owen.

The procedure took almost 4 hours as Dr. Atz extracted 14 teeth. He left the canines and his incisors, which are not really hard-working teeth in cats. Dr. Atz told me that the ligaments and connective tissue holding the teeth in to the bone was compromised and that’s why he needed to extract them. The canines did not look to be diseased yet, so he left them. He hoped that the canines would remain healthy and that we wouldn’t need to extract those teeth in the future (6 years later and those teeth still look healthy!). The next day, I brought Owen home and he hasn’t had issues with his mouth since! The following week Owen had bloody urine, but that is the start of a whole other set of problems and a story for another time!