@Satsuma like a cat, except that you have to get its teeth floated, and its pooping habits are ... differently tidy.

@Betty I tried to Google this, and I learned some stuff about capybara teeth, but not what it means to get their teeth floated?

@runpunkrun "teeth floated" is a specific phrase used by horse people. Horse's teeth continue growing throughout most of their life, to compensate for the fact that eating grass grinds your teeth down, but sometimes they wear unevenly, or grow too fast, and a guy needs to take a rasp to them to even them out.

@runpunkrun Rodents have ever-growing teeth, and in captivity their diets are sometimes not gritty enough to wear their teeth down as much as is required to stop their teeth from growing dangerously long. Usually a vet will do this, with a variety of implements depending on the presentation and the size of the rodent/teeth and it's not usually called "floating" in this context, but it's the same agenda.

@Betty ahh, got it. Do you know why it's called floating? As that feels like the exact opposite of grinding?

@runpunkrun I mean, all kinds of horse terms are very specific and weird, due, I think, to the long history of humans and horses. (when a horse can't get up, it's 'cast.' A horse's shoulders are 'withers'. A gray horse is "blue," etc.)

My mental model of float --> meaning is that the rasp should "float" over the teeth which should all be the same height, but idk, I'm not even sure that's true.

(if horse people want to tell me more weird terms/that I am wrong about what withers means, they are welcome)