Thread: Gingivitis/stomatitis - advice please!

Hi all,

as you may know we had a few problems with Benji when we first brought him home. He was sneezing, had very gunky eyes and red gums, and wasn't eating very well. All of those symptoms have now cleared up apart from his gums. His gums have got much worse, and they look ever so sore. He still crunches happily on his dry food though so it doesn't seem to be affecting him very much. The vet is also satisfied that he is doing very well otherwise, not running a temp, everything clear, and piling on the weight. In the 9 weeks we have had him he has tripled in weight (going from 1.1 kgs to yesterday 3.3 kgs) so the vet is also happy that not only is he gaining he is doing well with catching up!

We went to the vets yesterday, after having been on a metacam course for 10 days, and the vet thought it would be advisable to test for the three cat-flu viruses (I only knew of two!) so did a mouth swab and eye swab. We will be hearing back on the tests Monday the latest. Now Benji is very obviously teething as well, as he chews on bloody everything, his favorites being corners of wood furniture, cardboard but most of all straws. We leave chunks of cardboard and straws about for him to chew on and they are always mangled, and Storm isn't a chewer. Now I've looked at pictures of Stomatitis at his gums are nowhere near as bad, it seems more like inflammation from teething in comparison, but the vet wants to rule it out. There are no lesions or ulcers just redness.

Sorry for the rambling, but what I'm trying to get to is this, have any of your kittens had bad gingivitis while teething and later been ok once their adult teeth have settled in? I'm fully prepared for a positive test result but if it doesn't I would just like to know others experiences of bad kitten gingivitis in MC's!