Cat Tooth Chart

How to use this cat dental chart

1. Pick the right set of teeth. An adult cat has 30. A kitten has 26 baby teeth and no molars at all, and they are numbered differently, so switch to kitten mode if your cat is under about six months.
2. Tap the tooth you are looking at. You get its full anatomical name, its number in the system your vet uses, how many roots it has, and when it erupts. The map is drawn as if you are facing the cat, so the cat's right side is on your left.
3. Lift the lip and work backwards. Start at the front teeth and move towards the cheek. Most of what matters is at the back, and most of what people miss is at the back.
4. Mark what you can actually see. Tartar, a red gumline, a chip, a gap, a red spot where the tooth meets the gum. Nothing here asks you to measure anything or open a reluctant cat's mouth further than they will allow.
5. Read the summary. It updates as you go, tells you which finding matters most, and flags the two teeth vets check first. There is no calculate button.
6. Print it and take it in. The PDF is a real dental chart with your marks on it. Handing that over is considerably more useful than saying "I think one at the back looks funny."

Why this cat tooth chart is different

Search for a cat dental chart and you get pictures. The top result is a veterinary clinic's forms page hosting a blank PDF; after that it is a Pinterest board, a stock-photo search, a textbook chapter behind a login, and a charting product sold to practices. Every one of them is written for a vet or a technician. Here is what this one does instead.

• It is built for the person holding the cat. The professional charts ask for probing depths in millimetres, furcation grades and mobility indices, all of which require an anaesthetised patient. This one asks what you can see with a lifted lip, which is the only question an owner can actually answer.
• Every fact lives on the tooth. The name, the number, the root count and the eruption window are scattered across four different sources today. Tap tooth 108 here and you learn it is the right maxillary fourth premolar, the carnassial, the only three-rooted tooth in a cat's mouth, and the place tartar shows up first.
• It covers kittens without a second page. The deciduous set is not the adult set with four teeth removed. It has different numbers, no molars at all, and its own eruption timetable. One toggle switches the whole map.
• It knows which two teeth matter most. Mark tooth 307 or 407 as missing or eroded and the chart tells you why vets photograph those two first. No static chart can do that, and the finding it is based on is buried in a veterinary journal.
• It gives you something to hand over. Your marks come out as a printable, vector-drawn dental chart with a findings list, not a screenshot.
• It shows its work and it is free to embed. Every number is cited below, an automated test checks the whole dentition against those sources on every build, and any clinic or rescue can drop the chart onto their own site at no cost.

How cat teeth are numbered and named

Cats have 30 permanent teeth and 26 deciduous ones. Written as a dental formula, that is 2 × (I 3/3, C 1/1, P 3/2, M 1/1) = 30 for an adult and 2 × (I 3/3, C 1/1, P 3/2) = 26 for a kitten. Read it as: per side, three incisors top and bottom, one canine top and bottom, three upper premolars against two lower ones, and a single molar in each arch that kittens do not have at all.

The modified Triadan system

Every tooth gets a three-digit number. The first digit is the quadrant, numbered clockwise as you face the cat: 1 is the upper right, 2 the upper left, 3 the lower left, 4 the lower right. The last two digits are the tooth's position counting back from the midline. Baby teeth use the same layout with quadrants 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Two rules make the whole system readable. The canine is always number 4 and the first molar is always number 9, in every quadrant and every species. So 104 is the upper right fang and 309 is the lower left molar, always.

Why cats skip numbers

This is the part that confuses people, and it is deliberate. Cats are missing some of the teeth the numbering system accounts for, and the convention is to leave the gap in the sequence rather than close it up. So the first premolar you meet behind the upper canine is not 105, it is 106 — it is genuinely the second premolar, and the first one simply does not exist in cats. Behind the lower canine the first tooth is 407, the third premolar, because cats have neither a first nor a second lower premolar.

Keeping the gaps means the same number always refers to the same tooth across every species a vet sees. It also means a chart that renumbers cats' teeth 1 to 8 is wrong, and quite a few of the images you will find online do exactly that.

Roots, and why they vary so much

Every incisor and every canine has a single root. Behind them it gets uneven. The upper fourth premolars, teeth 108 and 208, have three roots and are the only teeth in a cat that do. The upper third premolars have two, and about one in ten carries a small third. The little upper second premolar usually has one root, though close to 40% of them have two, sometimes fused together. Every cheek tooth in the lower jaw — the third and fourth premolars and the first molar — has two.

This matters more than it sounds. Root count is what determines whether a tooth has to be cut into sections before it can be removed, which is most of why a feline extraction takes as long as it does.

The carnassials

Four teeth do the real work. The upper fourth premolars (108 and 208) and the lower first molars (309 and 409) are the carnassials, and they pass each other like scissor blades to shear meat. Cats have no grinding surfaces anywhere in the mouth, not even on the molars — they are obligate carnivores and the whole dentition is built for cutting. A fractured carnassial changes how a cat eats, which is why it is worth knowing which four they are.

When the teeth come through

Kittens are born toothless. The baby teeth arrive fast, over about four weeks, and are then replaced across a much slower second act between three and six-and-a-half months. A cat in the middle of that has a mixed mouth of both generations at once, which is normal.

Baby teeth

The tiny incisors break through at two to four weeks, the little fangs at three to four weeks, and the premolars at the back between three and six weeks. That completes the set of 26. There are no baby molars at all — the molars only ever appear as adult teeth, which is why a kitten's mouth is short at the back.

Adult teeth

The permanent incisors push the baby ones out at 3.5 to 5.5 months, the premolars follow at four to five months, the molars at five to six, and the big canines arrive last at 5.5 to 6.5 months. By around seven months a cat has all 30. From that point the teeth stop telling you anything about age, which is why aging an adult cat by its teeth is guesswork. If you are trying to age a young one, our kitten age chart combines teeth with the other developmental signs, and for a grown cat the cat age chart is the right tool.

Swallowed baby teeth, and the one thing to watch for

You will probably never find a shed baby tooth. Most are swallowed with food and that is harmless. What is worth watching for is a baby tooth still sitting alongside its adult replacement past about six months — a persistent deciduous tooth. Two teeth in one socket traps food and plaque between them and pushes the adult tooth out of position, and the fix is to remove the baby one. It is most common with the canines, where you will see a small, slender fang tucked right beside a big new one.

Frequently asked questions

How many teeth does a cat have?

An adult cat has 30 permanent teeth: 12 incisors, 4 canines, 10 premolars and 4 molars. Kittens have 26 baby teeth, made up of 12 incisors, 4 canines and 10 premolars, with no molars at all. The full dental formula is 2 × (I 3/3, C 1/1, P 3/2, M 1/1) = 30 for an adult, and 2 × (I 3/3, C 1/1, P 3/2) = 26 for a kitten.

What is the cat dental formula?

Permanent: 2 × (I 3/3, C 1/1, P 3/2, M 1/1) = 30. Deciduous: 2 × (I 3/3, C 1/1, P 3/2) = 26. The numbers are per side, upper over lower. The asymmetry is real — a cat has three premolars in each upper quadrant but only two in each lower one.

Why does my cat's dental chart skip 105 and 305?

Because those teeth do not exist in cats, and the modified Triadan system leaves the gap in rather than renumbering around it. The first premolar behind the upper canine is 106, the second premolar. Behind the lower canine it is 407 or 307, the third premolar. Cats have no first premolars in either arch and no second premolar in the lower arch. Keeping the gaps is what lets the same number mean the same tooth across species.

Which cat teeth have the most roots?

The upper fourth premolars, teeth 108 and 208, with three roots each. They are the only three-rooted teeth a cat has. All incisors and canines have one root. Upper third premolars have two, with a small third root in around 10% of cats. The upper second premolar normally has one, though nearly 40% have two that are sometimes fused. All the lower cheek teeth have two.

What are teeth 307 and 407, and why do vets always check them?

They are the third premolars in the lower jaw, one on each side, and they are the teeth most commonly destroyed by tooth resorption — a painful condition affecting somewhere between 28% and 67% of cats, more of them as they age. One study found that radiographs of just those two teeth would have caught the disease in nine out of every ten affected cats, which is why they are used as a rapid screening pair. If resorption shows there, a full set of mouth radiographs follows.

Can I tell if my cat has tooth resorption just by looking?

Only when it is already advanced. Resorption starts on the root surface, under the gum and inside the bone, where nothing is visible. By the time you can see a red spot or a hole where the tooth meets the gum, the process has eaten through the dentine and reached the enamel — a late-stage lesion, not an early warning. That is the honest limit of this chart and of any visual check. Dental radiographs under anaesthesia are the only way to find it early.

My cat is missing a tooth. Did it just fall out?

Possibly not. When resorption weakens a tooth enough, the crown snaps off during normal chewing and the root stays behind in the jaw, covered over by intact gum. It looks like a clean gap and is not one. Cats with visibly missing teeth are more likely to have resorption on other teeth too, so a gap is worth mentioning at the next check rather than filing away as old age.

Can I embed this cat dental chart on my website?

Yes — copy the snippet at the bottom of this page. The embedded version is a clean, ad-free widget built for veterinary practices, technician educators, rescues and cat blogs. Attribution is included in the snippet; there is no fee, no signup and no tracking.

Related tools

• Kitten Age Chart — how old is this kitten, from its teeth and five other signs →
• Cat Age Chart — an adult cat's age in human years →
• Cat Body Condition Score — is this cat too thin or too heavy? →
• Cat Weight Chart by Age & Breed →
• Browse all free cat-care tools by Dr. Anand →

What actually helps a cat's teeth

Very little of what is sold for feline dental health has been tested. The one credential worth looking for is a VOHC seal, awarded by the Veterinary Oral Health Council after it reviews submitted trial data rather than the manufacturer simply printing a claim on the bag. It comes in two separate flavours, one for plaque and one for tartar, and a product may hold one, both, or neither.

Only three cat treats sold on Amazon US carry a seal at all, and only one of those is accepted for both plaque and tartar. Dr. Anand's roundup of the best cat dental treats works through which is which, and flags the brands whose seals actually cover a dog chew or a toothpaste rather than the cat product on the bag — a genuinely common trap. For treats generally, the best cat treats guide covers what to feed between meals, and if a sore mouth has your cat off dry food, the best wet cat food picks are the softest way through it. Growing kittens working through the eruption timetable above want the best kitten food.

Nothing in a bag substitutes for brushing, and nothing substitutes for a dental exam. Treats slow down what forms next; they do not remove what is already hard.

Methodology & sources

The dentition on this page is not typed out as a list. It is generated from the published dental formula plus the modified Triadan numbering rules, and an automated test compares that generated set — tooth by tooth — against the published facts transcribed independently from the sources below. The test asserts the tooth counts, the per-quadrant composition, the missing-number gaps, the rule of 4 and 9, every root count and its total, every eruption window, left-right symmetry, and that no deciduous molar can ever appear. It runs on every build, so the chart cannot drift away from its own citations.

Deciduous root counts are deliberately absent. No source cited here publishes them for the cat, so kitten mode reports eruption and replacement timing instead, and the test asserts the field stays empty rather than being quietly filled with a guess.

• American Veterinary Dental College — Nomenclature, the modified Triadan system and the feline gap rule (primary reference: Floyd MR, J Vet Dent 1991;8:18-19).
• Bellows J, DVM, DAVDC, DABVP — "Cats Are Not Dogs When It Comes to Dentistry" (American Association of Feline Practitioners), the dental formulas and the root count of every permanent tooth.
• Colorado State University — Dental Anatomy of Cats, the deciduous and permanent eruption tables.
• Blackwell's Small Animal Pediatrics, Table 35-1, feline deciduous eruption times, cross-check.
• Gorrel C. "Tooth resorption in cats: pathophysiology and treatment options." J Feline Med Surg 2014;16:37–43, prevalence, the 307/407 screening rule, and the finding that visual inspection detects only end-stage lesions.

Feline dental anatomy is fixed and the Triadan system has been stable since 1991, so the numbers here are not expected to change; sources and product credentials are re-checked annually. About Dr. Anand · Last reviewed September 7, 2026.

Embed this cat dental chart

Free for veterinary practices, technician educators, rescues, TNR groups and cat blogs. Required attribution is included in the snippet — no fee, no account, no tracking.

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  Cat dental chart by
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  &middot; Reviewed by Dr. Priya Anand, DVM, ABVP (Feline)
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