How to Safely Remove a Tick From a Cat
Ticks are tiny infectious parasites that attach themselves to animals and sometimes humans by burrowing their heads into the skin to feed on the host's blood. Ticks are a serious problem and must promptly be removed, as the parasite's saliva may carry infectious diseases that can be left behind in the bite wound. Though veterinary care is recommended for treating cats with tick infestations, you can safely remove a tick from a cat at home.
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Things You'll Need
- Latex gloves
- Tweezers
- Jar
- Alcohol
- Antibacterial ointment
- Antibacterial soap
Instructions
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Latex gloves protect your hands from bacteria. Wear latex or rubber gloves. Take the tweezers and carefully secure the tick by the head as close as possible to the point of entrance on your cat's skin. Be careful not to break the tick's body; you don't want to leave the tick's head under the cat's skin, which may lead to infection.
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Use tweezers to carefully grasp the tick's head. Position your tweezers so that you can pull the tick in a straight, outward direction. Don't pull at an angle or twist the tweezers while extracting the tick. This can cause the body to break and release its infectious saliva into the cat's bloodstream. Firmly pull the tick directly out in one steady motion.
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Have a jar of alcohol ready to kill the ticks. Immediately place the live tick in a jar filled with rubbing alcohol. Immersing the tick in alcohol will ensure that it is immediately destroyed to prevent reinfestation, breeding and transference to other pets or humans. Attempting to flush ticks down the toilet will not prevent the parasite's return or kill them. Ticks must be killed with alcohol.
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Cats may have minor sores after tick removal. Disinfect the entrance wound. Your cat will likely have a red, sore or even slightly bloody puncture wound at the site of the tick bite. Clean it thoroughly with a pet-safe antibacterial soap. Apply a topical triple antibiotic ointment to the skin surface to help accelerate the healing process as well as prevent infection.
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Wash the wound and your hands with antibacterial soap. Wash your hands thoroughly after disposing of the dead parasite. As a precautionary measure to protect yourself and your cat from infection, it is advised to scrub your hands with an antibacterial soap after handling a tick to remove any possible traces of the parasite's infectious blood or saliva.
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Tips & Warnings
Common methods used to remove ticks like applying Vaseline or alcohol to the tick or approaching it with a lit match are unsafe for the cat and will not encourage the tick to remove itself from your pet. On the contrary, these dangerous methods may make the parasite forge deeper into the flesh and deposit more harmful bacteria into the bite wound.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit cat image by Darren Ager from Fotolia.com latex gloves image by Wendy Lea Morgan from Fotolia.com tweezer 3 image by askthegeek from Fotolia.com empty glass jar image by vadim kozlovsky from Fotolia.com the cat image by Milena Kowalska from Fotolia.com washing hands image by Julia Britvich from Fotolia.com
