One of my cats Joe is a bit of a smooch. In general he loves people, he has never scratched or nipped anyone. He was attacked quite nastily once by another cat and developed an infected bite in his side. The local vet was going to have to give him an anaesthetic in order to cut open the wound and clean it, while he was under the vet suggested a tartar scrape of his teeth. It turned out that before they operated they decided to see how sensitive Joe was - they ended up performing all of the operation without a general anaesthetic or minor pain killers.

Not only did the vet say that Joe was the gentlest cat they had seen but he also saved me AUD $250 becase he didn't have a general...bless him.