RINGWORM??????????
I have no idea what’s up with the first of the two pictures I embedded in yesterday’s entry. It showed up fine when I first did the update. It turned into a broken link sometime after I made the entry, though. When I display the entry on my home computer, it still shows fine. But it still won’t show for me at work. Very aggravating. I’ve a request in to Steve and Matt about this one, but they’re so backed up right now I don’t expect an answer for a while.
The vet we saw last night was an old classmate of mine. It’s amazing how different our paths have been. Dr. M and I originally tracked the same, and took many of the same senior year rotations together. He changed his mind though and went small animal, while I went into industry. We might both be from the same class of the same school, but we have little in common professionally. He agreed with my presumptive diagnosis of feline acne on Clueless.
Poor Clueless Wonder has to have his chin scrubbed with Oxypads twice a day. We’re treating this as a case of feline acne for the moment, but if it doesn’t clear up in a couple of weeks, we’ll reevaluate the situation. A definite diagnosis requires a punch biopsy, and with CW’s bum ticker the general anesthesia is not a good idea. He has large open sores on his chin, and the astringent hurts him. He mews pitifully while I scrub him down. I feel like an ogre.
The Warrior Princess got her feline distemper booster. We decided not to do the rest because of concerns with feline sarcoma. She’s now exclusively an indoor cat, so the risks from the vaccine are greater than the risks from the diseases. I asked about the balding on her ears. I pretty much expected to be told to take a wait and see approach to it, but Dr. M was more concerned than I. We did a skin scraping looking for mites, with a negative result. The Professor saw his beloved WP come back into the room with two raw, red ears and gave me an anguished look. Dr. M then pointed out that we have a new kitten in the apartment and that cats can be asymptomatic carriers of … ringworm. (I guess the title gave that surprise away, though, didn’t it?)
Shit. I never thought of that.
We’re doing a ringworm culture now, and treating it with a steroidal/antifungal cream until we get results from the culture. Damn, damn, damn. If it’s ringworm, then the Kitten from Hell has managed to notch up another strike against her. I don’t even know if you can treat asymtomatic carrier cats. I have some research I’m going to have to do here.
They were too busy to be able to make an appointment for KfH’s spay last night. I’m off to call the vet to do that now.