Fred

I’ll leave the first part of your comment unanswered for now lol😺 You’re right about the fangs, though. I never did explain why she has titanium fangs. I also never told the story of how Eva ended up living with me in the first place. Eva is an African serval, a real predator. I never wanted a serval, and I don’t think people should buy wild cats just because they want something beautiful or unusual at home. A serval isn’t a toy. But things were different with Eva. This was about six years ago. I was on a short trip, and people nearby had been looking for an escaped serval for several days. People from my country have local group chats wherever they move, and the escape was all over ours. We followed the search too, then decided to help and eventually got in touch with the owners. That’s when we found out they were breeding exotic cats to sell. The escaped serval was an adult male, and we later learned he was Eva’s father. His escape brought way too much attention to the breeding operation. Inspections followed, along with questions about how the animals were being kept and bred. I won’t get into every detail. There was plenty of fucked-up shit going on. The breeders ended up in immigration detention because they were foreigners. At the time, they still had an adult female serval and two very young kittens they were planning to sell. One of them was Eva. The kittens had already been separated from their mother and bottle-fed way too early so they’d get used to people and be easier to sell. By then, both were completely dependent on humans. The escaped male was eventually found. People who knew the breeders took him and the adult female, but the kittens were going to be put down. It all came down to a new law. People who already had these animals before the law took effect were allowed to keep them. Acquiring or keeping new ones was banned, and the kittens didn’t qualify for the exception. At that point, I didn’t see much of a choice. The two kittens had already been born. They were alive, they’d done nothing wrong, and now they were going to be put down because of all this bullshit. I took both of them somewhere it was legal to keep servals. I won’t get into exactly how I pulled that off. Let’s just say it took a hell of a lot of time and money. The stress was even worse. I later gave the male kitten to someone who already had experience with animals like him. He couldn’t take both because two adult servals need a lot of space. The boy is still doing great, and Eva stayed with me. The whole thing started with trying to keep them alive, so I named her Eva. I realized pretty quickly that a serval is absolutely fucking nothing like a big house cat. She’s a predator who weighs over 14 kg, runs fast, can jump almost three meters straight up, and has the temperament to match. But you get attached to her almost instantly. And once you do, you’re responsible for an animal that depends on you for everything. Eva also had health problems. Being bottle-fed so early took its toll, and as she grew, we discovered serious issues with her bone development. We spent a long time going from vet to vet and figuring out her diet. She went through exam after exam and slowly got better. Eventually she got stronger and grew up. For a while, everything was fine. Then the dental problems started, especially with her fangs. Most vets suggested simply removing them. She could live a normal life without them, so medically, that was the easiest option. I didn’t like it. Eva is still a serval and a predator. These problems went all the way back to the beginning of her life. Just removing her fangs now and calling it a day felt wrong. So I started looking for another option. Eventually I found a veterinary dentist who takes on difficult cases. I had to wait several weeks because right before Eva, he’d been working on a bear’s teeth. An actual bear. He examined Eva, and we decided to restore her teeth. She got ceramic crowns on the back teeth. The fangs were more complicated. A predator’s fangs have to withstand much more force, so ceramic wasn’t strong enough. We needed something tougher. That’s how Eva ended up with titanium fangs. She uses them without any problems, including when she eats meat. No one replaced healthy teeth with metal ones just for looks. The damage was already there. Her fangs had to be rebuilt, and we went with titanium. The engravings were my idea. When the fangs were being made, they asked if I wanted anything engraved on them. I figured that since they were going to be titanium anyway, I might as well add something personal. One upper fang has a tiny crown engraved on it. The other has E.L. The E comes from her name, and the L from my last name. Her teeth are fine now, and Eva is doing great too.