Professional dental cleaning under general anesthesia is the only effective way to treat feline dental disease, and fears about anesthetic risk should not prevent cats from receiving essential pain relief.
The welfare argument for routine dental cleaning under anesthesia is straightforward: the alternative is chronic, progressive oral pain that significantly impairs quality of life. Many owners who decline dental procedures due to anesthetic concerns are inadvertently choosing months or years of pain for their cats over a low-probability procedural risk. Modern veterinary anesthesia for healthy cats carries very low mortality risk — comparable to human surgical anesthetic risk — while the welfare benefit of treating dental disease is concrete and significant. The practice of anesthesia-free dental scaling provides false reassurance by removing visible tartar while leaving subgingival disease and tooth pathology untreated, delaying diagnosis and appropriate treatment of conditions causing ongoing pain.