My cat has a nasty infection in his mouth! Help!?

Question

Ok, so today is Monday and Saturday I noticed my cats mouth smelled bad. I opened it and GROSS! his bottom lip had a huge sore! Green!!! And there was a yellow sore on the top lips! It got worse on Sunday so I took him to the vet today and got him antibiotics. He looks miserable and he is drooling a lot. He is 14 and I feel so bad. Is there anything I can do to help him? The smell is terrible! Eh! How long until he starts to look better??

Answer 1

Cats, especially older cats suffer from gum disease just like humans do.  I have a 9 year old tom cat who has recurring gum infections and I have to bring him to the vet on a regular basis to have his teeth cleaned.

My cat is FIV positive, so that plus his age is the cause of his oral problems.

Yes, the smell is awful. The vet has probably given you the antibiotics to clear any infection in the mouth before giving your cats teeth a cleaning.  Check with your vet again, and see if they will give you a mild pain killer to mix in the cat food.  This usually helps them feel a bit better and stops the drooling. Check out the following link.

Hope this helps.

  

Answer 2

It typically takes at least 48 hours for oral antibiotics to begin to work. Follow your vets advice. If you feel that he is getting worse call your vet or take him back in.

Answer 3

There are 2 nasty things I remember that caused sores in the mouth.

The first is CaliciVirus.  That is one of the things contained in cat vaccinations, but if they were exposed prior to being vaccinated, they can contract the highly contagious disease.  It has a range of symptoms that include mouth ulcers, weakness in the rear legs, upper respiratory, VERY high fevers and drooling.  There is not a test for the disease that I know of, and there is also a new really lethal strain out there.

The second I cannot recall the name of.  It looks like trenchmouth in humans, lots of ulcers at the gumline, almost like gingivitus, but really really nasty.  The problem is that the infection cannot be treated with antibiotics, the teeth can all be removed and that will sometimes end the infection (it eats into the teeth).  But sometimes the cat will need the gums lasered down repeatedly.  It's a nasty, only had the bad luck to see it a handful of times luckily.

Mouth ulcers can also be linked to kidney issues I believe.