Elvis has stinky breath.

My vet thinks he's about 8 years old, he was a stray who moved in last summer. He was a tom cat (his family jewels were removed pronto when he became an official member of the household) and has scars to prove it. Also, his back leg was broken at some point; it's a bit stiff & the vet felt the healed break. He is an excellent cat. Mellow, quiet, clean, very dog-savvy, smart, affectionate and addicted to catnip.
He goes outside, which I don't like. But he's survived this long - he is street savvy. The nearest busy road is a long ways off. He doesn't stay out long. He dislikes using the cat box, and prefers to go in the empty wooded lot across the street. At least I have no neighbors with nice gardens, so I don't have to worry about him pooping in someone's flowerbeds.
He climbs the trees around the house and catches mice outside. Last winter I had a real mouse problem in the house; haven't seen a single one since El moved in.
Anyhow, his breath reeks, he has gingivitis - so I need to schedule him for a dental. Poor thing! First, he gets his orchids removed. A few months later, he gets shots. Now his teeth have to be scraped.
Hopefully a decent diet will keep them clean for the rest of his life. I was going to do the whole raw thing with him, but cats are more complicated than dogs, with their specific needs for taurine and such. I get coarse-ground rabbit for the dogs sometimes - ground whole, guts bones and all. Elvis adores this, and I mix it about 50/50 with good canned cat food. He does get a little dry on the side. And, he eats mice. Little rodents have the highest taurine content of any mammal meat, I've read. Canned clams are also taurine-rich. Cats who get insufficient taurine may go blind and will have heart damage. Also, 100% dry food diets are not at all good for cats because they are desert animals with a low thirst drive and are usually chronically dehydrated on all-dry food.
I will expand on cat nutrition in a future post! But if you feed kibble, start adding some canned to your cat's diet. Truly.
It's really hard to get a good photo of Elvis because he wants to sniff the camera, or he's moving around, or he turns his back on me. He's a very handsome kitty, looks exactly like a seal point bicolor Ragdoll cat.