Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties:

I have been treating my cat’s ear mites for six days now. I used Vitamin E 400 IU on a cotton ball, wipe it out, and leave some to soothe the irritation. But now her ears are red and have crusty stuff on them, and she’s acting sad. What do I do?

~ Heather

Dark, crusty gunk in the ear is a sign of ear mite infection.

Siouxsie: Well, Heather, while there are home remedies for ear mites — and most sources recommend using olive oil or almond oil rather than Vitamin E oil — it sounds like your cat may be suffering from a more serious condition.

Thomas: Sometimes cats with ear mites develop secondary bacterial or yeast infections, which can cause just as many problems as the mites themselves.

Dahlia: Those infections can sometimes even cause permanent hearing loss if they’re not properly treated.

Siouxsie: So the first thing you need to do is take your cat to the vet in order to make sure that you are, in fact, dealing with ear mites rather than something else.

Thomas: The fact that your cat’s personality has changed and she’s acting sad, as you say, could be an indication that she’s in pain — and this makes a vet visit even more important.

Dahlia: If you’ve ever had an ear infection, I’m sure you know how much it hurts!

Siouxsie: When you go to the vet, he or she will take a swab of the gunk in your cat’s ears and examine it under a microscope for evidence of mites. If he or she finds them, you will be given ear drops to kill the mites and instructions on how to administer them.

Thomas: Your vet will also be able to determine if your cat has a yeast or bacterial infection and give you the medicine to treat that condition as well.

Dahlia: Veterinarian Dr. Laurie Huston has a brief but informative page on ear mite diagnosis and treatment at her website, which you might want to review.

Thomas: You’re doing the right thing by cleaning your cat’s ears with a cotton ball rather than a swab. If you use a swab, you can push the wax and mites further down into the ear canal, and possibly cause further damage.

Dahlia: Sometimes ear mites can “camp out” on the skin around your cat’s ears and even get on her claws if she’s doing a lot of scratching. Because of this, some vets recommend a full-body treatment with an insecticide or using a spot-on flea/tick/mite treatment.

Siouxsie: Ear mites are highly contagious between animals, so if you have other pets in your home, they should be treated as well.

The ear mite life cycle

Thomas: The ear mite’s life cycle last three weeks. It starts when the mite lays an egg, which hatches in four days. Three to 10 days after hatching, the six-legged larva develops into the protonymph stage. Three to five days after that, it molts into the next stage, at which point it attaches to an adult male mite and, if the new mite is female, she becomes fertilized and begins to lay eggs.

Dahlia: Because the life cycle lasts three weeks, treatment must be continued for the entire life cycle in order to eradicate the mites.

Siouxsie: When it comes time to give the medication and clean the ears, you want to be sure to do it properly so you don’t cause extra damage. For those of you who haven’t done this before, here’s a video from the staff of Battersea Cats and Dogs Home on how to administer ear drops and ointments to a cat:

Thomas: So, Heather, we hope we’ve been able to help out a little bit. Good luck to you and your kitty.

Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties:

My husband and I took our cat to the vet last week because she has tiny sores around her neck. We expected to find out that they were caused by allergies. Imagine my surprise when we were told they were caused by lack of hormones, and she was put on birth control pills. I can’t make out a couple of the letters, but it looks like the name of the medication is megace zomgrio. We’ve given her 1/2 pill four times. She received the last one this past Saturday, and she won’t receive another one till this coming Saturday. The sores are smaller now, but today she seems to have become lethargic. Could that be a side effect of the pills? If she is still lethargic in the morning I do plan to call the vet’s office, but I wanted to find out your opinion.

~ Carol

Siouxsie: Carol, there is a drug called megestrol acetate, which goes by the brand names Megace or Ovaban (depending on which company makes the medication).  Megace is a progestin, a synthetic hormone which stops ovulation by making the body think it’s pregnant–hence its use as a birth control method.

Thomas: Megace is one medication vets use to treat a condition called feline acquired symmetrical alopecia, formerly known as feline endocrine alopecia, a type of balding seen most often in neutered male cats and spayed middle-age females.

Dahlia: The symptoms of feline acquired symmetrical alopecia (FASA) are symmetrical hair loss on the back of thighs, abdomen, and genital areas; and hair that easily pulls out. There is no itching associated with this condition.

Siouxsie: However, FASA is a very rare condition and it is generally a “diagnosis of exclusion,” which means your would most likely perform a number of diagnostic tests including skin scrapings, hair analysis, and blood tests, to rule out other causes for your cat’s condition.

Thomas: Some vets have had success using Megace to treat psychogenic alopecia, baldness caused stress-related overgrooming. However, Megace does have some potentially serious side effects which lead the authors of the Cat Owner’s Home Veterinary Handbook to say “Treatment with sex hormones is not recommended because of serious side effects, which include liver and bone marrow toxicity.”

Dahlia: Other side effects of Megace include “decrease in certain hormones, diabetes (elevated blood glucose), increased thirst, increased urination, personality changes, increased weight, cancer, and rare liver problems,” according to one veterinary pharmaceutical reference guide.

Siouxsie: Megace appears to work by eliminating the itching and irritation associated with skin allergies or other conditions, which reduces a cat’s urge to scratch. Vets typically recommend short courses of treatment with anti-anxiety drugs such as amitryptiline, busprione (Buspar), or fluoxetine (Prozac) to treat psychologically caused overgrooming because the side effects are not as potentially severe as those of drugs like Megace.

Thomas: We’d recommend that you talk with your vet about your cat’s condition and various treatment options. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and get as much information as you can. You’re also free to get a second opinion about your cat’s condition and treatment options. No vet should “cop an attitude” about a client wanting a second opinion, and if yours does, it’s not your problem. This is your cat, he’s your responsibility, and you have the right to be sure she gets the most appropriate treatment.

Dahlia: Although lethargy isn’t listed as a common side effect of Megace, our neighbor’s cat become very lethargic after an injection of sex hormones to treat severe allergies.

Siouxsie: Just in case you’re curious, we did find a table listing various causes of hair loss in cats, with a list of symptoms, diagnostic tests used to determine each condition, and recommended treatment.

Thomas: Good luck, Carol. We hope your kitty gets back to her itch-free and active state soon!

Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties:

I had my autistic son’s kitten neutered and a few days later he couldn’t move his hind legs very well. I took him to the vet and they thought it was because he was ill and put him on antibiotics. He is almost done with the meds. Is it possible the vet did something wrong in the surgery? Please help. I don’t know what to tell my son about his kitty.

~Corrin

Siouxsie: Although we’re not veterinarians and couldn’t say for sure what happened, our research has indicated a possible explanation.

Thomas: Your kitten may have had a reaction to the anesthetic that was used for his surgery. According to Mike Richards, DVM, at VetInfo For Cats, Ketamine and Xylazine, the two most common drugs used for the first stage of anesthesia, can, in rare instances, cause central nervous system problems.

Dahlia: This happens if the medicine causes the blood pressure to get too low, which causes heart arrythmia (irregular heartbeat) and means that not enough oxygen gets to the brain.

Siouxsie: These symptoms are extremely rare and they happen to the best and most competent vets in the world, so it’s not necessarily an indication that your vet did something wrong.

Thomas: Sometimes surgery can uncover medical problems that weren’t obvious before, such as cardiomyopathy (weakness of the heart muscle), or liver or kidney problems.

Dahlia: Some vets encourage people to have their cats’ blood tested before they’re put under anesthesia. When this testing is done, it can reveal potential liver and kidney issues, but it won’t uncover cardiomyopathy.

Siouxsie: The good news is, because your kitten is so young there’s a very good chance he’ll make a full recovery. It may take weeks or even months, but he should be okay eventually.

Thomas: While your son’s kitten is coping with this disability, make sure he gets plenty of fluids and that he’s eating. If he stops drinking or eating, get him to the vet right away.

Dahlia: So, Corrin, if I were you I’d explain to your son that sometimes the anesthetic makes cats sick and wobbly, and it may take a while for your cat to get better. Encourage your son to be extra-kind and gentle to the kitten while he recovers and to be as helpful as he can. If your son is aware that he’s “different” from other kids, you might be able to use this as a teachable time to help him learn more about compassion and caring.

Siouxsie: We don’t know the level of autism your son has, so we don’t know how capable he is of taking care of the kitten or understanding what the problem is, but Mama has autistic friends who have found that taking care of sick animals has been a profoundly life-changing experience for them.

Thomas: We’d also encourage you to talk to your vet and see if you can get more answers about what the problem is. If your son’s kitten doesn’t make a full recovery with the antibiotics and they continue to assume that he has an infection, you may want to consult another veterinarian.

Dahlia: Good luck, Corrin, and our best wishes for your kitten’s recovery.

Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties:

I have two male cats that grew up together since they were tiny. They are both neutered but one, Loki,  seems to be more stressed out than the other. We brought Loki to the vet because he was standing in the litter box while peeing and pees against a wall (almost every day). They did find very small crystals in his urinary tract but she thought the behavior was stress-related. So we tried the Feliway and “Good Cat” herbal stress reducer. It seemed to work at the beginning, but now it’s back to his same routine. He pees in one location every day and defecates in the litter box. They both have their own litter box. We tried different boxes with different litter (wheat, regular cat litter, pellets, etc.) and he seemed to use the regular cat litter. We moved the boxes back to the regular spot they go to and now he’s back to his peeing on the floor thing. Is this stress related? And if so, what can we do to have Loki pee in his litter box? This is very frustrating and I don’t want to give him up. Please help!

~Geoff

Siouxsie: So far, you’ve done everything right: You took Loki to the vet to make sure the inappropriate urination wasn’t caused by health problems, you’ve used the Feliway and Good Cat to reduce the level of stress in his life, and you even moved the litter box to the place where he was peeing.

Thomas: The fact that Loki used the litter box when it was in the place he pees tells us that there’s something about that particular spot that’s making him feel the need to mark it with urine.

Dahlia: Is the peeing spot near a window or a glass door, by any chance? If so, Loki may have seen an intruder cat outside and decided to stake out his territory by urinating near the window where the offender was seen.

Siouxsie: If it is near a window or glass door, try covering the bottom two feet of the glass with an opaque cloth or a piece of cardboard. It’s not fantastic for your décor, but it could go a long way towards putting a stop to Loki’s unwanted peeing.

Thomas: After you’ve taken care of this step, you’re going to need to clean the place where Loki’s been urinating. Even if you can’t smell the odor anymore, rest assured that Loki can — and once it starts to fade, he’s going to feel the need to freshen it up again. The easiest way to clean the stain is to use an enzymatic cleaner.

Dahlia: But not all enzymatic cleaners are created equal. The product we recommend is Anti-Icky-Poo, which is phenomenally effective not only in neutralizing the odor but in actually cleaning the stuff that causes it. It’s worth the extra few bucks, trust us! (Also, if you order it from Cat Faeries, the site we linked, they’ll send you specific instructions on how to use it.)

Siouxsie: If you have carpeting, be aware that the urine may have soaked through the carpet and into the backing, and possibly even into the sub-floor. Any cleaning you do is going to have to take care of that deep-penetrating odor.

Thomas: For mild urine marking (and trust us, a place that’s been peed on many times is not mild) or a one-time “mistake,” a mixture of white vinegar and water can make for easy and inexpensive cleanup.

Dahlia: Whatever you do when cleaning up cat urine, do not use ammonia or bleach! Cat urine has ammonia in it, so by using ammonia you may be encouraging more urination behavior rather than less.

Siouxsie: After you’ve used the Anti-Icky-Poo to clean the spot on your floor, let it dry. Buy a piece of plastic carpet runner — the type that has the grip spikes on the bottom — and place it on the area where he pees, with the spikes facing up. This will make it much less pleasant to use that area as a toilet.

Thomas: And even if for some reason he still wants to urinate in that spot, he’ll be peeing on plastic, which is much easier to clean up than carpets or hardwood floors.

Dahlia: Geoff, we think you had the right idea when you put the litter box in the place where Loki has been urinating, but you may have moved it back to its old location too quickly.

Siouxsie: If after you clean up and put the carpet runner down, he’s still wanting to mark in that area, you can try bringing Loki’s litter box back to that place. This time, put it next to the upside-down plastic carpet runner. When he’s been using that spot for a couple of days, move the litter box gradually, like a foot or so per day, back to its proper place.

Thomas: If you’ve been using a Feliway diffuser, put it in the room where Loki’s been urinating. If not, consider purchasing one. If the room in question is filled with happy-cat pheromones, it will make him less likely to feel stressed enough to urinate.

Dahlia: And if all else fails, talk to your veterinarian about medication. Some cats have had really good results from a short course of Prozac. The drug will make your cat less likely to get triggered into his stress behavior and can help to re-wire his brain.

Siouxsie: We’re not big on using psychiatric medications on cats, but we believe that if nothing else has worked and you’re considering giving up your cat because of his behavior, please try the Prozac first.

Thomas: Good luck, Geoff. Please let us know how things turn out.