Sending good thoughts for fast healing following your dental procedure. Your quotes struck me strongly today, especially the last one. Seems as though I become melancholy more easily over the past (generational changes and youth) than I previously did. I'm sure that trying to push myself to take pictures of and then get rid of the few things that I still have from my childhood that my parents gave me is having an strong effect on me.

My DD is a vet. When someone complains about the price of a visit to the vet's office, all they are considering is the time they spend with the vet. I suggest that everyone looks around the vet office and realize that there overhead and employees that must be paid through the fees the vet charges. A vet office has employees other than the vet and vet tech. There may be an office manager, receptionist, etc. that must be paid. The exam rooms have to be cleaned between patients. The office must be kept clean. There is rent, insurance, maintenance and utilities that must be paid. Office supplies, computers, software etc are more expenses. Labs (physical space and supplies) must be paid for. Xray machines are expensive and take up space. A vet's office has more or less the same expenses as a doctor's office. There is far more to running a vet's office than just what the vet gets paid.

not sure how your vet managed to rule out allergies.. .that would be my number one guess, as stomatitis itself is sort of related to an allergy, as is ear shaking in most cats... Just because the stomatitis is gone does not mean the allergic or autoimmune tendencies are. Allergic inflammation of the inner ear, eustachian tube and into the mouth can certainly cause discomfort though I have no idea how to determine what your cat might be allergic to (often this is the case... if not a food allergy, which it isn't' about half the time)- There are no good tests in cats to determine what they are allergic to.. and it could be 'allergic to itself' (autoimmune condition)... which is pretty hard to do much about other than treat with something like a steroid (be careful if trying steroids in a fat cat- can lead to diabetes).. had that happen with a patient of mine...got rid of the stomatitis, and for the first time in the cat's life, it was pain free... and it proceeded to gain a huge amount of weight and quickly became a diabetic... probably a more complex and difficult disease to deal with all the ramifications than is stomatitis... but at least not usually a painful one.

If it has come to the point where the vet determined the teeth need to be extracted it´s better to have them extracted, bad teeth are very painful, also, the cat doesn´t chew the food but swallows it whole or partially chewed which causes malnutrition because it can´t be digested properly. The primary reason to worry here is the age of the cat, better have it done with inhaled anesthesia with either Isofluorane or Sevofluorane.