Sushi's Teeth

I had this grand plan that we would take some close shots of Sushi's mouth, to show how misaligned her teeth are. Do you know how hard it is to get a rat to cooperate with that?

Sushi does her best Elvis impression

Her bottom teeth are nearly impossible to see without forcing her mouth open. Her top teeth though are more obvious, due to the way they exit and then re-enter her mouth.

Sushi's upper incisors, two weeks after getting trimmed.

Fortunately, Dave saved Sushi's teeth after her first visit to the vet. The amazing thing, when I look at them (oddly, they have been in my backpack for the past month), is that the vet left at least that much length in her mouth. So her teeth, prior to that first visit, were twice as long as the giant remnants shown below.

Upper incisors are at the top, lower incisors are below.

The other amazing thing with these horrific teeth, is that Sushi was only 32 grams (at nearly 9 weeks of age). She was just skin and bones with gigantic teeth. Her upper incisors had not yet grown into her palate (a groove had formed but fortunately no broken skin), but her lower ones had grown into her cheek. After the vet trimmed them, she had a tooth-sized hole in her cheek and was on antibiotics for 10 days. She received 0.1 ml of antibiotics twice a day, which was laughably tiny.

Sushi is much healthier today - at her last vet visit two weeks ago, she was 64 grams. She is still a fraction of the size of her sister and probably always will be.

Sushi almost looks like a mouse next to Saké

Despite her size though, she's thriving. She had a rough time with the anesthetic at her first trip to the vet, most likely because she was in such tough nutritional shape. At her last visit she bounced back quickly, and we're hoping that future trips will be similarly smooth.