Hi everyone, I was wondering how common or uncommon my experience is.   I have a big lovable orange kitty named Bam who I rescued as a feral kitten and is seven now.   He tends to get FORLs (feline resorptive lesions) and has had very expensive dentals for the last three years.   I brush his teeth with an enzymatic toothpaste every other day though I do have trouble getting to the back teeth.   Still he just yawned and I saw two spots in the back that I'm quite sure are new forls.    He is due for his annual check-up.    He has been tested for bartonella and it was negative.

I feel bad for him because I known they are painful and bad for me because every year I'm looking at a big financial hit.   His first dental with four extractions was $900!   I wish I didn't have to care about the money but I do some - he has two other expensive medical issues also.  Good thing I love him to pieces.   Does anyone have any success strategies for slowing down these FORLs????  

Has Bam ever been tested for FIV or FeLV? There is some thought that feline retro-viruses may play a role in dental health:

Feline Retroviruses and Dental Disease

FIV infection leads to increased incidence of FORL

What does Bam eat?

My Tolly had FORL. By the time I lost him to cancer when he was 12, he had very few teeth left. I, too, used an enzymatic paste for him (c.e.t) but it made no difference to the frequency of the resorptive lesions. He didn't have any tartar, but he had the lesions. There is no known prevention for this terribly painful dental condition, because they don't really know the cause.

I stopped with the c.e.t about a year before he left me. I decided the sorbitol, the first ingredient in the paste, was bad news, for all my cats.

PS Tolly also had a seizure disorder and the herpes virus. He took phenobarbital and l-lysine all his life. My vet always used sevoflourane anesthesia, a safe fast acting gas, for his dentals.

Hi Sugarcatmom, fortunately Bam was tested when I first brought him into the vet as a feral kitten and hasn't had any potential exposures since then.  Whew.    He eats Royal Canin Urinary S/O diet dry and some canned as of July when we had a scary round of trouble with a blockage and infection.   Before that I used to feed him Wellness and other similar type foods.   Do you know of a food connection?

Hi Otto, sounds like your Tolly was much loved     My dear Bam has feline herpes virus as well lodged in his eyes mostly and sometimes causes congestion.   I do give him Lysine when it flares up but not continuously. He also possibly has IBD.   I wonder if herpes and FORL are connected?    He does get some tartar build up and when he went from 4 teeth out one dental to only 2 on the next I credited the tooth brushing.  But now it looks like it'll be two this time also so I don't know.    I really worry for his feral mom who I keep indoors because she hasn't had even a hope of a dental in seven years....I pray she does not have this problem.  Her face and jaw are shaped completely differently though she does have the herpes too.  Catching her to get her to the vet has been....well to date, impossible.

How is your Bam?? Did he have to have more teeth removed??