Night of the Angry Kitten

[sheepwhatsleeps]

I finally tracked down some tapeworm medicine at the Petsmart up in La Jolla, near where we used to live. I got the last bottle on their shelves. I also picked up a supply of Advantage, since tapeworm is contracted from fleas, so we need to guard against them as well to prevent re-infection, although we hadn't noticed any on the cats. After

Comments

[elchaz]

How did you know they had a tapeworm? Are there specific symptoms?

[sheepwhatsleeps]

You know they have tapeworms when little white worm-like things come squirming out of their butts. It's super gross. The worms die after a few seconds in the air, but you can occasionally find them crawling on you briefly if the cat's been sitting on you. This is how I noticed the problem. (Ew ew ew) Also, you'll see little white things, like grains of rice or seasame seeds, in the litter box and around their bed.
The cats didn't seem to notice much, except for the fact that they got real attention starved for the few days when we weren't holding them very much. Brief tapeworm infections are apparently fairly common in cats, and don't do them any real damage. The tapeworms come from fleas (fleas eat the tapeworm larvae, cats eat the fleas = cats have tapeworms), which is why you have to flea-control at the same time. The tapeworms generally don't transfer to humans-you have to be eating fleas too, and the human stomach is less hospitable to the worms in general, so it takes a lot of effort to pick it up.
Fun!

[newsgal81]

Reminds me of Thread.

[sheepwhatsleeps]

Yeah, only without the acidic burning and (hopefully) without the need to cleanse it with fire. I definitely don't think the cats would handle that well.

[elchaz]

Yowza. That's horrifying. Thank goodness I had lunch already.

Glad your cats are OK, though. :)