Guh - Arty has Ringworm

Reinedumonde

The tiny kitty we adopted a few weeks ago is now playing host to ringworm, the vet confirmed yesterday.  For those who are unfamiliar, ringworm is not a worm, but rather a fungal infection.  It's not life threatening, but is very irritating to the animal and contagious for both animals and people. 

Fortunately, neither we nor our other cat have any signs of it--the vet attributes this to our mature immune systems.  But now we have to give poor Moriarty lime sulfur baths.  Not looking forward to that at all.

Does anyone else have any experience with this?  Anything we can do to make the recovery go faster?

wittyschaffy

ohhh, poor kitty.  I don't have experience with it in an animal but I had it once!  I had to put cream in every single spot (I was a swimmer and apparently I had gotten the edge of my towel on the floor and then used my towel and got it all over.  I had spots!) so baths sound like an easier option- especially since he's covered in fur and would probably lick at the cream.  I don't envy you having to bathe a cat though - from what I hear that isn't the most enjoyable task!  Be sure to wash your hands well after you pet him though.  As your vet said, very contagious to you! 

Cipolla2Be

No experience with ringworm, just worms....uh....I'm sorry.  Hope the little guy gets well soon!

Reinedumonde

wittyschaffy:

ohhh, poor kitty.  I don't have experience with it in an animal but I had it once!  I had to put cream in every single spot (I was a swimmer and apparently I had gotten the edge of my towel on the floor and then used my towel and got it all over.  I had spots!) so baths sound like an easier option- especially since he's covered in fur and would probably lick at the cream.  I don't envy you having to bathe a cat though - from what I hear that isn't the most enjoyable task!  Be sure to wash your hands well after you pet him though.  As your vet said, very contagious to you! 

It would be really difficult to wash our hands after every time we pet him.  He's very much a lap kitty and we'd have to quarantine him to keep that up.  The vet thinks that if we were going to break out, we would have by now and we've been applying medicated wipes to the infected areas, which stops the spread.  Ugh, poor goofy kitty.  At least he's still little, so bathing him will be a little less arduous.

Reinedumonde

Update - I called the shelter where we got him to tell them about it, just in case other kitties were also infected.  They could not have been more apologetic and offered to cover our vet bills and even bathe him if we don't want to do it ourselves. 

I thought it was a little weird, though, that she said I could return him if I wanted to.  Why would I want to return my kitty?  Even if he does have a fungus, we still love him.  I know there are people out there who would want to return a "defective" kitty, but that just seems so heartless.