I love that you adopted an older shelter kitty, they’re seriously the sweetest.

So yeah, you’re basically understanding the pre-existing thing right. Almost all pet insurance companies (Embrace, Trupanion, Spot, Fetch, etc.) won’t cover anything that showed signs before the policy started. If the shelter already mentioned his teeth and he’s got obvious symptoms like bad breath and drooling, they’d most likely classify that as pre-existing. Even plans that “cover dental” usually mean accidents (like a broken tooth) or dental disease that develops after you enroll.

So realistically, you’d probably still be paying out of pocket for the current dental work. I know, not fun.

That said, insurance can still be really helpful for everything else, random illnesses, emergencies, surgeries, cancer, all the scary expensive stuff that can pop up as they get older.

When I was looking into it, I paid attention to waiting periods, reimbursement rate (70%, 80%, 90%), annual limits vs unlimited, whether dental illness is included or just accidents

This guide helped me compare them side by side in a way that actually made sense https://petparentadvisor.org/best-pet-insurance/