Followup on the Whole ‘Ringworm’ Situation

posted at 9:56 am
on Aug. 9, 2007

Comments: 6 so far

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Update 8/23: I’d like to make it clear that I have no way of knowing for certain where Maggie’s ringworm came from. The ringworm could have come from any source. It’s possible we could have given it to Maggie or she could have picked it up in the four days after we got her.

Well, it’s ringworm

7, us zero so far.  We’ve discovered that four of our friends have caught it.  It’s only folks who came over and played with our kitten, not any other visitors so far.  So if you see a small red spot or three on your skin, and you’ve been kitten juggling at the Smith/Gardner house, perhaps you ought to get that checked.

We’ve found that good ways to treat ringworm include:

• Tinactin cream twice a day
• Nizoral shampoo twice a week
• some funky pill Susie got that means she doesn’t need to do the cream
• direct sunlight 30-60 minutes a day (i.e. yes, go get a tan and call it medically necessary: this seems to be the best help so far)
• launder everything in your house twice and then once more

We weren’t going to tell the breeder—after all, what could they do at this point?—but several friends think Nightmist might somehow be unaware of their cats health issues, so I wrote this letter…

Hi Susan and Graham.

We have learned from our vet that the virus that caused Maggie’s eye problem is definitely cat herpes, which you never told us.  It looks like our other cat has caught herpes from Maggie, too.  Since herpes is incurable and manifests in times of stress throughout the life of the cat, it looks like we’ll be dealing with that for the rest of both cat’s lives.

We’ve also discovered that Maggie had ringworm when we got her and has now given it to our other cat, both of us, and four of our friends.  The treatment is time consuming and expensive, and the fungus itself is very irritating.  I had to cancel my mother’s visit to us this summer, and tell other visitors and clients to our house (we work at home) that they might be infected. This has caused us embarrassment and loss of income.

I’m very disappointed that you either didn’t know about both these diseases, or didn’t tell us.  I think you have a responsibility to notify anyone else who has gotten a cat from you since Maggie was there of the risk of both these diseases. I should have written you sooner once we learned, but frankly, I didn’t imagine that you might not have known about these conditions in your own cattery—and that if you did find out, that you’d have contacted us.

I wish you’d been honest with us—we probably wouldn’t have taken Maggie because of the herpes. She should have gone to someone who had no existing cat, and we told you we had Aimee.

And if we did take Maggie, we certainly would have kept her quarantined until the ringworm was cured, and not infected ourselves and our friends. We could have dealt with ringworm safely and efficiently if we were informed.

I don’t expect anything from you now. But I do hope that no other customer of yours has to go through what we’re going through, so I hope you do the right thing and notify everyone who’s at risk until these diseases are resolved at your place.

TTFN

Travis

So, now at least we’ve done the right thing… I hope I don’t have anything more to say about this for quite some time!

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Previous entry:
Nightmist Abyssinian Breeders and the Tale of Our New Kitten

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Happy 30th, Staci and Nicole