Cat ailments

We have a cat that is part Maine Coon and is about 8 years old.  First cat I've ever had since I was 10, or so.  He's black and his name is Blackie (go figure, lol).  Over the past couple of years since I met him, he's had polyps in his ears, the inside of the ear lobe sticking up, and they became more numerous as time passed. About a month ago he started scratching around his ears and shaking his head plus he was throwing up at least once a week, so we found a homeopathic vet and took Blackie to see him.  The vet said he had a yeast infection in the ears (no mites, whew!) and gave us some medicine to put in them.  He suggested mixing a 1/4 teaspoon of pumpkin into his food for fiber to help on the throwing up. The pumpkin did the trick.  He hasn't thrown up once (other than one hairball) in two weeks.  The medicine for the ears worked wonderfully, too.  He immediately quit scratching and shaking his head.  Most of the ear polyps went away, also!  That was a bonus surprise. Now this vet is called The Travelling Vet because he makes house calls.  He just doesn't make them all over the metro area here.  For clients who live outside his area, he uses an exam room in a veterinary dentist's office. When we went back today for the follow-up, the vet looked at his teeth and found some problems.  One molar was a bright red nub, three other back teeth had red spots on them, and the remaining molar was covered in tarter.  He had the dentist look at them and the diagnosis is feline oral resorptive lesions.  This is where the cat's body, for some unknown reason, reabsorbs the teeth back into itself.  There is nothing that can stop it.  The bright red we were seeing is the pulp of the tooth and the cat is probably in considerable tooth pain. The dentist gave us a quote of $1640.  I thought it was rather expensive, but my sweetie said it isn't and told me a vet in California quoted $8000 about 3 years ago, plus made her feel like a terrible person for having a cat in such condition.  Needless to say, the vet's "sales job" threw question on the whole tooth thing, so it was essentially dropped until today.  Now we will get it done Friday morning. $1600 on short notice is not possible with what I make, plus it's less than the room left on the credit card, so I asked if they had payment plans.  She handed me a pamphlet for CareCredit, a credit card only used for vets and a few select human doctors.  When I got back to work, I went online, filled out the form, and now have a card that will more than cover the cost of the work.  If I pay it off in the next 6 months (which can be done), it's interest-free.  One thing they said is that cats don't need their teeth.  Many cats have no teeth and do quite well even on dry food.  They only need teeth to catch, kill, and tear apart the prey.  Everything else is done in the stomach.  Too bad people aren't that evolved, LOL.