Hi! I am Dr. Adrienne Mulligan. I am the owner of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic. I am here to talk to you about taking care of cats with critical conditions, critical emergencies and health issues. If your cat goes out frequently, or if it is an indoor outdoor cat, or if you come across a stray that you decide to make your own, you may notice that these cats get problems with their ears and their skin, and basically ear mites are extremely common, fleas and ticks are extremely common, and ringworm which is really a fungus of the skin is somewhat common. So I am going to address those three things and things that can be done at home. But also, there are better things that can be done by taking them to a veterinarian. The ear mites are the most common cause of an ear infection in cats, and an ear infection will show up in two ways: one you will see dark débris inside your kitty’s ears, and two, you might see your kitty really batting at his ears, shaking his head, and then you will notice the débris. They could just be infected, but in most cases those cats have ear mites. There are over-the-counter products for ear mites, that are little bottles of things that you can put into the cats ears, cats hate it, they hate getting wet, they hate putting stuff in their ears, and you generally have to do it two weeks on, two weeks off, two weeks on so that you can get the eggs, because it will only kill the adults, it wont kill the eggs, and you will have to wait till the eggs hatch, and you may have to do that for a couple of months. So treating them over-the-counter is cheaper, but can be very difficult. So taking them to the vet, you might find that we have a lot of things that are whole lot easier: drops that go on their, on the back, they take care of lot of things, or even drops that even go in the ears, and it is a one time treatment, and it is just so much, the office call is well worth it compared to what you go through trying to treat it at home.
