Cabell’s house of hobo cats
Okay, so my veterinary woes are nothing compared to Gwen’s problems, but they’re still annoying.
To recap: last year, when I got Legba, he infected the household with a relatively new strain of feline Demodex mites that the veterinary community didn’t even agree EXISTED this far north until the University of Wisconsin Veterinary Teaching Hospital’s dermatology department started diagnosing cases left and right–and lucky for me (kind of) that they did, because it’s such an uncommon problem and so difficult to detect, because they groom the mites off their hair so efficiently, that most places probably wouldn’t have.
Anyway, the determatology department was very excited; they took samples off of all my cats and photographed Bart, the only one who actually manifested symptoms, for a journal article or something. They trimmed all the cats’ nails gratis and sold me a big bottle of lime sulfur solution with which I had to bathe all three cats weekly for two months, lest the other two reinfect Bart.
This was very unpleasant, but it seemed to solve the problem. Bart’s fur grew back and he stopped licking big scabby places on his stomach.
Then, this past August, he started to look a little patchy again. By September–conveniently after we had already had our annual vet visit–he was back to looking like a hobo, with scabs everywhere and big chunks of fur lying all around the house. So we went back to the vet.
They couldn’t find any sign of the mites in the fecal sample I provided, but it’s hard to say for sure if it actually came from Bart, and all the symptoms were exactly the same, so we assumed that it was demodex again, coming out of a 10-month dormancy. It turns out that they didn’t really know what the hell they were doing with the lime sulfur, anyway; it just seemed like something that might kill things in general, I guess.
They’re still not really sure if their treatments are that effective, but this time they prescribed ivermectin, a liquid heartworm medication labeled for cattle, to be given daily to Bart for the next two months, and Frontline flea & tick spray to be applied to all three cats weekly for an unspecified period of time. Heartworm meds are how they treat canine demodex, which is better understood, although my vet remarked that feline demodex live further up the hair shaft, which might make it less effective. Anyway, the cattle stuff is at least cheap.
So I’ve been spraying them, and giving Bart the ivermectin, and he actually is looking a lot less scabby, although he is still patchy–it will take time for the fur to grow back in, I guess.
Legba, however, is now once again suffering from the cystic acne on his chin that was originally diagnosed in August, and for which I had to give him a three-week course of antibiotics and wash his chin every day.
I happened to catch my vet when I stopped by the vet school today to get more Frontline spray and special dental kibble (Pandora has bad teeth, and apparently Bart is developing plaque now, too), and she wrote me another prescription, so we will be doing ANOTHER three-week course of antibiotics, and more chin-washing, I guess.
It turns out that when she told me to change their bowls from plastic to metal and wash his chin and stuff, she failed to mention that whatever I did, it would probably recur anyway, because that’s what cystic acne DOES. And yes, probably I DO need to wash his little face EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE to have any hope of preventing it. And even then it might recur.
Then she admitted that she had a cat with cystic acne and after awhile, she decided that “it didn’t seem to bother him” and just stopped worrying about it. She said he only oozed on stuff occasionally. Frankly, I think this may be the avenue we pursue if the problem recurs after this second course of antibiotics. Cystic acne LOOKS really terrible, but Legba doesn’t actually seem to mind it that much, either, and I know for sure that he DOES mind a) taking pills and b) having his little face washed.
I’m just waiting for Pandora to present with something spectacular. Last year I had to pay $300 to get her TEETH CLEANED, so you know she’s just saving it up.
October 20th, 2005 at 10:51 pm
My cat had acne recently and the vet encouraged us–my homosexual boyfriend and I–to pop her pimples. Or rather, to “express” her pimples. Expressing pimples. There’s so many jokes, I’m just not going to. Aaanyhoo, the idea was to relieve the pressure from the painful pimples on her chin. So we did–or we tried to–for a few days. We expressed her pimples. It turned out to be much more revolting and degrading (to us) than expressing our own pimples–even the ones we’ve gotten youknowwhere. A couple times the pimple expression caused big squirts of pressurized blood to spray the living room. I could go on.
Oh, and the cat hated this. She took to hiding under the bed for, like, six weeks non-stop while we were home even after we gave up on the pimple expression regime. We just decided to let it go. Uuunnntiiilllll… someone told us about a homeopathic feline acne remedy, that worked muuuch better and that she loved. I guess it felt soothing. I don’t really know what it was. The homeopathic vet just sold us a bottle of unlabeled stuff and said “apply this with gauze”. It smelled nice. We kept it in the fridge. The acne was gone in five days.
October 21st, 2005 at 9:28 am
That is the most disgusting pet care thing I have ever heard. I’m sure the cat hated it. I’m surprised she ever stopped hiding under the bed at all.
I don’t know if my problem is quite the same; no one made me pop any kitty acne and the antibiotic did make it go away the first time–it just didn’t KEEP it away. Did you have any recurrences?