The Good, Bad, and Ugly

derrycats

June 21

It has been a wild ride here lately, with very little spare time for writing, or even thinking some days.

Let's get the bad and the ugly out of the way first...

Some of my fosters came down with ringworm, which I first noticed about two weeks ago. Ringworm is a fungus and a royal pain in the you-know-what. And it spreads like crazy. After getting an official diagnosis, everyone is now in cages so they can't mingle anymore. Most of them are doing the Noah's Ark thing, so two to a cage, except Queenie, the momma kitty. The only one who has the ugly lesions is with another kitten who has a small spot. A couple of the other kittens have small spots the size of the head of a pin.

The treatment: lovely baths, twice a week, in a lime-Sulphur dip that smells like rotten eggs and stinks up the house. Washing NINE cats (eight kittens, one adult) in this stinking stuff twice a week for a bunch of weeks, two so far. The dip removes and kills the spores, which is what we want, but it takes a few weeks to get them all. The one kitten, Leo (the one who seems to have a weak immune system generally) who has a sizeable lesion, and three others who have small spots, are also on an oral anti-fungal, which is given once a day.

Treating the environment is also critical, as they shed spores. So every day, each pair comes out of their crate, and I disinfect the crate or cage - five of those cages. I have developed a system over the two weeks, and got my time down from about 2 hours to 45 minutes for this project. There's a lot of letting the disinfectant sit for 5 minutes for maximum efficacy, so I have figured out how work on the next cage or two while the first one dries, and not waste anytime standing around waiting for things to dry. And the floor gets mopped every day because the litter they are tossing out of their cages could carry spores too.

All of this also requires that I put on protective gear each time I go in with the kittens to clean, feed, etc. That prevents me from spreading it to me or to any of our own pets. Because it is my busiest week of pet sitting for the year (argh...) I have clean clothing and shoes down in the basement, so I change into those before going out on pet sits, go out the basement door, and come back that way and change again when I get home, to further guarantee that I don't spread this to other homes.

All of which, with a busy pet sitting schedule, makes for very long days. The good news, at least so far, is that some of the cats seem to be ringworm free, and the vet feels that if they don't show any signs of ringworm (which glows blue-green under a black light) for three weeks, they can go to the adopters who are very kindly and patiently waiting for them. Queenie is still clean, (though they all still get the baths, just in case) and I hope she goes home late next week. Two of the kittens will hopefully go home on weekend after July 4th. Paws crossed.

No pictures of them...sorry. They look pretty sad in their cages and crates, though they've adapted over time, but pictures shot through bars just don't cut it. I hate having them confined, but there's no other way to prevent the spread.

For the good - the kitchen! They scheduled more time that has actually been needed for parts of the project, so we have some "days off" when we don't have contractors here, which is nice. They've made wonderful progress so far, and we're loving how it is coming together. Next week the floors and granite go in, and then July 1 the appliances. But here's some before and after shots: