Grinding teeth while eating

Lately, we hear the sounds of teeth grinding, while Sooty is eating his LC FF. Is this normal? or does it indicate something might be amiss? (as far as we know, he has no dental problems...)
He grew up on freee-fed Dry food (aka Kitty-"crack"!) so is he just missing the crunch?

 

I know cats can develop Bruxism (sp?), which is basically they grind their teeth. I don't know much about it, other than I heard my vet tell another patient one day that her cat should be brought in for an exam as Bruxism can cause teeth to break/fracture, and may be the symptom of something else going on.

 

I don't think it's bruxism, as he ONLY does this while actually eating, when he is chewing on a mouthfull of food (where bruxism is tooth grinding when NOT eating)...
I suspect that he's just still using his learned 'dry food crunching / chewing' technique on the wet food, as he is still relatively new to it... but I was just wondering if anyone else has seen this...!

 

I haven't seen it before...my vast wealth of knowledge (ha!) is limited to what I told you. :lol:

 

my late mr. chubbs started doing that. he had other things wrong but was grinding teeth when eating. during exam for other stuff,and I told vet and he checked teeth, they were red and sore to the touch

 

My cat did this for about a week, two years ago. The vet said he had a bad tooth and then, the next morning, the bad tooth fell out and no more sound.

However.. about a month or two ago, he started doing it again. No teeth issues this time, but he does have early stage kidney disease (we just found out). Teeth grinding is a sign of this. My suggestion would be to get his kidney values checked, as well as his teeth.

 

Another pessimistic report: My Marbles did this and it turned out to be a bone tumor in her
jaw, which was causing her jaw to be out of alignment when chewing.

Perhaps a report to the vet about this.

 

OK - thanks for the responses, we will get the vet to check him.

 

I took my cat, Gus to the vet yesterday for this problem and some other things as well. His teeth are not coming together correctly because he has had several teeth removed. His gums are slightly infected and she could feel a bit of swelling in his lymph nodes. He got a shot of antibiotics and we will go back in two weeks to decide if it needs further action or if the problem is solved.

When the vet had his mouth open I could very easily see the red and inflamed gums, however be careful if you decide to do this on your own because it makes a lot of cats pretty angry! I really suggest taking your cat to the vet.

One other thing I did - I filmed Gus with my video recorder on my phone while he was eating and making the grinding noise and then showed it to the vet. I thought this was better than me trying to describe it to her.