I adopted an adult kitty a few years back and he had horrible dental issues which resulted in having most of his teeth extracted (I ended up with significant discounts per tooth because most of them basically fell out once any stress was applied.) After a few weeks of wet food he went back to eating mostly dry. Per my vet, cats mostly swallow pieces of dry food whole and the crunching occasionally heard is more the result of pieces of food getting caught between teeth while repositioning in the mouth to swallow.
I still give the little guy a fat tablespoon of moist food every morning as a treat, but aside from that he just eats dry without a problem.
One of mine didn’t even chew when he had teeth. When we had roast chicken once I went and gave them the cartilages (I hate them) and he was soooo greedy he just swallowed it whole, but it didn’t pass through, so he puked it out and swallowed it again. This went on for 4 times and I just couldn’t hold my laughter!
This was the day he lost the first half of his teeth. While being pretty pissed for 3 days he was fully healed after about a week. We went with 2 just to be sure before giving him dry food again.
Also, removing all teeth at once is illegal here in Europe, we had do have 2 appointments.
Did he have any behavioural problems afterwards? I read that removing cats claws makes them skittish since they dont have claws for self defense. Any such issues?