Malocclusion: the Gift that Keeps on Growing

Sushi's vet appointment yesterday was both good and bad. The good news is that she's gained 21 more grams, for a total of 181. The average weight for an adult female is 350-450 grams, so even though Sushi is only 4.5 months old, she's still pretty tiny. Saké is probably 30% bigger than Sushi at this point.

The bad news is that, however things have shifted in her skull, her bottom incisors are now pretty loose. So not only do they turn drastically and aim into her right cheek, they wiggle freely. This is likely to make eating pretty uncomfortable and difficult for her.

As a result, the vet mentioned doing surgery to pull the top and bottom incisors at six months, and this is something we are seriously considering. Sushi would be able to come home the same day she has surgery and would be on antibiotics and pain medicine for a bit afterward. Evidently rats do pretty well with this and usually are back to eating the night of the surgery.

We have some research to do and more questions to ask of the vet, but I think with both her teeth requiring such frequent trimming plus the looseness of her bottom teeth, surgery is the way we're headed.

In terms of getting her teeth trimmed this time, Sushi was a champ. I think the entire vet visit, from walking in the door to Sushi waking up enough to leave, took about fifteen minutes.

I didn't take the camera to the vet, so instead I'll end with this picture of Dave looking disapproving about the whole teeth situation.

Dave: the ultimate rat perch.