I’ve been thinking about tooths and claws lately. The items Nature is famously red in. Coincidentally, I have new Invisalign braces, and kittens.
And yes, being apprentice cats, they are 98% pudding and lint, but the rest is damn pointy.
It could be, and has been, said that Clifford, my male black kitten, bites. He is a little bitey to be sure. But I’m paying attention, and he is not biting down per se, or attacking, but more chewing. Which, when you are equipped with stilettos instead of molars, feels aggressive. Still, it doesn’t seem like an attack. Maybe chewing makes his baby teeth feel better or maybe he’s wondering if I might be a codfish. He wouldn’t be the first.
He is also clawy. Again, he is not clawing at people or furniture, but availing himself of his pointier bits to get some elevation. I’m sympathetic to that. Clifford is in many respects the sweeter of my two kittens, although they both show promise, but the sucker is damn pointy nonetheless. He is not as athletic as his sister Wally, who can jump cleanly up on laps and furniture. So he has to claw his way up things. Which means that I do not necessarily have a shitty-cat situation but merely a conundrum that could be remediated if I wore Carhartts.
Embryonic cats get their teeth nubbins very early. Humans do too, exhibiting tooth potential well before genitals show up. Why do we mammals get our pointy bits so early? What’s out there we need to be prepared for?
Maybe they’re for mom. The teeth aren’t evident at birth. If they were, it would lead, evolutionarily speaking, to an abrupt cessation of lactation, because what the hell, dudes. When the teeth do erupt, it’s a sign to the mother to start hauling in meat on the hoof. The kids are equipped. Time they got off the damn sofa and pounced their own dinner for a change.
They’re ready early. Humans, they’re just a little damp package with a big wobbly head for, like, years. When they do get teeth they’re cute little knobs. They can get you past the strained carrots but apple skin is still a challenge. Evidently those teeth are just holding the adult teeth’s place for a few years while your face embiggens.
The fetal mammal has cells that are thinking about being teeth and cells that are thinking about being jawbone, and they make a project of it together. So the tooth sockets in the jawbone form around the tooth buds, and then later on when the adult teeth come in they just park their enameled fannies in the same sockets, presumably now farther apart. But wait. There are twelve more teeth coming in than we started with. New sockets have to be formed. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a photograph of a child’s skull but it’s packed to the rafters with thirty-two teeth. There are teeth jammed practically up to the eyeballs. It’s a horror show in there.
My baby teeth were just fine. All lined up like little National Guardsmen. But when my adult teeth were getting ready to make an appearance, suddenly it was like when the teacher calls recess and goes out to her car for a smoke and a shot of Jack. Pandemonium.
God bless America. Teachers used to set up games for us assuming all of us kids were interchangeable. We were not. I was the littlest and most squishable person in the class and Garland Moran was on his third go at first grade. Garland Moran was mountainous. When we played musical chairs, Garland would put three chairs in eclipse at once and flick me aside along with my aspirations. And when the music stopped, he used my head as a pivot point and I ended up sideways between two folding chairs with Second Bubba one chair back, exactly like my left lateral incisor.
The top incisor situation can only be explained by a rough intramandibular game of dodgeball.
If Clifford’s permanent teeth come in sideways, I’d be okay with that.
Do you know anyone with or have seen people with extra teeth? One of my classmates for several years in elementary school had a complete row of extra teeth. When he pulled open his lips it was a wall of teeth in there.
My dad mentioned having some extra teeth at one point that needed to be pulled. Unfortunately he’s not around to be asked about it and those people who should be in the small group who could remember no longer remember what happened a minute ago let alone a single conversation from forty or fifty years ago. If in fact he did have supernumerary teeth that trait has not shown up in any of his descendants.
Thinking on this some more, I think my childhood friend Carl had his adult teeth show up before his deciduous teeth fell out. Or his deciduous teeth didn’t fall out. But there are folks out there with way more teeth than are really necessary.
On the subject of cats and their pointy bits, they just seem to enjoy investigating things with those parts of their anatomy. The marmalade tom across the street lured me in with his coy appearances and disappearances on the other side of the fence and then when I offered him a treat, he repeatedly hooked me, not the treat. I’m pretty sure his eyesight is fine, he’s just an asshole.
It’s not just cats. I ran into a pair of cairn terriers the other day that very enthusiastically chewed on my fortunately engloved fingers. Dogs, as opposed to cats (in my experience anyway) are more likely to use their mouths in a gentle playful manner and less likely to break the skin. I find that most dogs will respond positively if I put my fingers in their mouths and tug gently at their jaws. They also tend to become friends for life. I ran into a dog at the park the other day who after a vigorous rub, scratch and massage, ditched his owner and showed every intention of following me home.
Jeeze. That skull must have been the inspiration for the Alien in the eponymous movie Alien. (Except for the alien saliva. My late African Grey Max was the inspiration for that. His poop may not have been able to dissolve metal floors, but it certainly removed the finish from my hardwood floors.)
Although I’m not quite that toothy, I DO have one baby tooth that has remained in my mouth, as there was no adult tooth to back it up. I had 3 impacted wisdom teeth removed during my life, so I call that baby tooth my immaturity tooth. It helps to balance out my one remaining wisdom tooth. Probably explains my sense of humor.
I’ve got all four wisdom teeth, but only remember three coming in. That was a production with a strap of gum across the middle of each tooth until it finally snapped. I was asking my dentist one day why only three had come in and he smiled and informed me they were all there. Oh.
My pediatric dentist would likely take credit for that. He decided four permanent teeth in the front of my mouth had to go. It was a symmetrical removal, but somehow I ended up with odd numbers of teeth across the front. Thanks, Dr. Platnick wherever you are.
Ha! “Pudding and Lint.” Those would be good cat names too.