Tsathoggua
Arachnopeon
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2010
- Messages
- 23
Just recently, unfortunately mine/my housemate's rescue cat Padfoot (10-ish month odd male, of good physical fitness) has come up with a flea problem.
At the moment, he is a housebound cat, so I'm not quite sure where in winter the little bastards could have come from, since there will have been no eggs in the house that were able to survive, considering the only other pets in the house were my housemate's fish and my spider, until a pair of mice (captive raised, non wild strain) arrived, and then a considerable time since their arrival elapsed, with moderate physical interaction between felid and murine lives respectively.
Middle of winter at the moment, so Padfoot stays in, not to mention we have to hide him from my prick of a father, who would cheerfully throw him out on the street to freeze, Padfoot found us and adopted us, almost 6 months ago now, whilst we took a delivery from the local pharmacy for a repeat issue of our meds, as we get them dropped off at our door sometimes.
Opened the door, in he came, fur matted and ragged, piss wet through, cold, shivering and as thin as a charlie-sniffing teen model under the delusion of believing hydrogen hydroxide to count as one of the three main food groups, just walked in under our noses he did, and curled up under the radiator to warm himself up.
No way I could chuck him out again after he had had a taste of warmth, and the canned chicken (eww...I could eat this particular stuff no more than I could his Wiskas in gravy pouches...some american brand of canned chicken in some sort of foul liquid that my american housemate eats at times) that he was given.
Now he is well built, warm at night, and always has at least one of us on hand to look after him, as long as my 'father' doesn't find him, he already did once, and demanded we toss Padfoot out into the street, or get lost ourselves. Not that I would have left, or had my housemate leave anyway, but it is the damn principle that counts, he now has thought Padfoot gone for almost 7 months;P
Fleas are making him truly miserable right now though, we had to take his collar off, which he isn't happy about one bit, he has a sore on his chest, where it appears the lawyer-like, hellbound little arthropods have been concentrating their efforts. Looks like it is starting to get infected, so we have to act fast, I have the sole income among the two of us, and it is just a pittance the govt pay me on behalf of a chronic knee condition, and a bit more for them seeing being autistic as a horrid tragedy (well it would be tragic....if I wasn't:clap
Real crap money though, so having the vet do it all is pretty much out, it is already costing us £50 to provide an industrial-strength flea spray, to treat the house, as apparently the ones available on the high street (Can anybody confirm this as the case?) are ineffective compared to prescription only brands.
My gut is telling me to find out the active ingredients and the concentration thereof and see if I can get the equivalent for less than £15 per can. We cannot treat the full house either, only most rooms, my own bedroom isn't an option, thanks to my housemate's fish tank recently breaking after getting dropped, and being replaced with a thick walled expanded polystyrene packing crate given for free by the local pet shop, that will break if moved whilst full of water for sure, and of course, a spray designed to kill insects, is going to do no favours for arachnids either...so it looks like we are going to have to spray down every room but mine, the areas I use as laboratory space, and in the loft, by stealth, when the 'father' is not in the house.
What I need to know, is what is an appropriate dosage of transdermal fipronil, in mg/kg for a male, neutered cat of approximately 9-11 months?
Also, regarding the sore itself, antibiotics are expensive, at least in the UK, vet care is hideously expensive, we took him to an RSPCA charity place last time, that ended up with us having to walk all day with him in a crate carrier around town, until we got to the place, which was awful, auto-lockin and lockout systems, bare walls and stained walls, uncaring staff that tried to rip us off for a fee merely to set foot within the walls to ASK for a consultation (not the consultation itself, that cost, and the antibiotics cost further, this was an attempt at wringing money out of those they knew to be financially the poorest, as sadly, I am at the moment)
That was a charity place, and we are not going back there unless it is a life or death issue, or one of hideous suffering threatened, the staff really were not competent, guy that saw Padfoot told us 'she' was a pregnant female, and had no idea what the small scar tissue area on 'her' underside was, when in actual fact, 'she' was a sterilized HE. Not to mention the fact that he made light of taking a rectal temperature, attempting to convince us both that the cat had absolutely no problem and probably enjoyed it.
We have a human-suited antibiotic cream available, a base of wax/petroleum jelly/high molecular weight alcohols and polymeric bulking agents, the actives being batracicin-Zn, polymyxin B and neomycin, a version containing the local anaesthetic pramoxine is also available, although I imagine there MAY be safety issues regarding sodium channel blockade effects on the heart rate if given to a small animal, would the latter be safe to use? and are there any issues with topical use of the above antibiotics?
Systemic antibiotics are available also, namely metronidazole, penicillin, phenoxymethyl penicillin, chloramphenicol and IIRC some erythromycin, although not much of it, and clindamycin, all save the erythromycin in multiple gram quantities, I really was hoping to be able to use some of those for my bioengineering work, as I am trying to go self employed, but the moggy's health comes first, as does any of the animals, from the spider, to the cat, and my project second.
If anybody again has appropriate doses in mcg or mg/kg, compounding any of the above into a cat-friendly form is not a problem. Well, in as much as giving any cat anything that isn't either A-disgusting. feculent, reeking muck to the human olfactory sense, or B-anything involving roast meat, or C-cat mint is likely to be well met
We just cannot afford to pay for what we may already have something suitable for. 'We' is 'ME', and at the moment the financial situation is bad enough that I don't always have food, and have to save for needed things slowly, very, very slowly. I do however have existing lab supplies and the like including antibiotics, and the means to measure them accurately.
Really could do with knowing if OTC vs rx-only flea-whacker formulations ever can be properly effective when in the form of house-treatment (as opposed to directly treating the cat), because the one the vet is selling, is £15, and I eat for a week off that.
At the moment, he is a housebound cat, so I'm not quite sure where in winter the little bastards could have come from, since there will have been no eggs in the house that were able to survive, considering the only other pets in the house were my housemate's fish and my spider, until a pair of mice (captive raised, non wild strain) arrived, and then a considerable time since their arrival elapsed, with moderate physical interaction between felid and murine lives respectively.
Middle of winter at the moment, so Padfoot stays in, not to mention we have to hide him from my prick of a father, who would cheerfully throw him out on the street to freeze, Padfoot found us and adopted us, almost 6 months ago now, whilst we took a delivery from the local pharmacy for a repeat issue of our meds, as we get them dropped off at our door sometimes.
Opened the door, in he came, fur matted and ragged, piss wet through, cold, shivering and as thin as a charlie-sniffing teen model under the delusion of believing hydrogen hydroxide to count as one of the three main food groups, just walked in under our noses he did, and curled up under the radiator to warm himself up.
No way I could chuck him out again after he had had a taste of warmth, and the canned chicken (eww...I could eat this particular stuff no more than I could his Wiskas in gravy pouches...some american brand of canned chicken in some sort of foul liquid that my american housemate eats at times) that he was given.
Now he is well built, warm at night, and always has at least one of us on hand to look after him, as long as my 'father' doesn't find him, he already did once, and demanded we toss Padfoot out into the street, or get lost ourselves. Not that I would have left, or had my housemate leave anyway, but it is the damn principle that counts, he now has thought Padfoot gone for almost 7 months;P
Fleas are making him truly miserable right now though, we had to take his collar off, which he isn't happy about one bit, he has a sore on his chest, where it appears the lawyer-like, hellbound little arthropods have been concentrating their efforts. Looks like it is starting to get infected, so we have to act fast, I have the sole income among the two of us, and it is just a pittance the govt pay me on behalf of a chronic knee condition, and a bit more for them seeing being autistic as a horrid tragedy (well it would be tragic....if I wasn't:clap
Real crap money though, so having the vet do it all is pretty much out, it is already costing us £50 to provide an industrial-strength flea spray, to treat the house, as apparently the ones available on the high street (Can anybody confirm this as the case?) are ineffective compared to prescription only brands.
My gut is telling me to find out the active ingredients and the concentration thereof and see if I can get the equivalent for less than £15 per can. We cannot treat the full house either, only most rooms, my own bedroom isn't an option, thanks to my housemate's fish tank recently breaking after getting dropped, and being replaced with a thick walled expanded polystyrene packing crate given for free by the local pet shop, that will break if moved whilst full of water for sure, and of course, a spray designed to kill insects, is going to do no favours for arachnids either...so it looks like we are going to have to spray down every room but mine, the areas I use as laboratory space, and in the loft, by stealth, when the 'father' is not in the house.
What I need to know, is what is an appropriate dosage of transdermal fipronil, in mg/kg for a male, neutered cat of approximately 9-11 months?
Also, regarding the sore itself, antibiotics are expensive, at least in the UK, vet care is hideously expensive, we took him to an RSPCA charity place last time, that ended up with us having to walk all day with him in a crate carrier around town, until we got to the place, which was awful, auto-lockin and lockout systems, bare walls and stained walls, uncaring staff that tried to rip us off for a fee merely to set foot within the walls to ASK for a consultation (not the consultation itself, that cost, and the antibiotics cost further, this was an attempt at wringing money out of those they knew to be financially the poorest, as sadly, I am at the moment)
That was a charity place, and we are not going back there unless it is a life or death issue, or one of hideous suffering threatened, the staff really were not competent, guy that saw Padfoot told us 'she' was a pregnant female, and had no idea what the small scar tissue area on 'her' underside was, when in actual fact, 'she' was a sterilized HE. Not to mention the fact that he made light of taking a rectal temperature, attempting to convince us both that the cat had absolutely no problem and probably enjoyed it.
We have a human-suited antibiotic cream available, a base of wax/petroleum jelly/high molecular weight alcohols and polymeric bulking agents, the actives being batracicin-Zn, polymyxin B and neomycin, a version containing the local anaesthetic pramoxine is also available, although I imagine there MAY be safety issues regarding sodium channel blockade effects on the heart rate if given to a small animal, would the latter be safe to use? and are there any issues with topical use of the above antibiotics?
Systemic antibiotics are available also, namely metronidazole, penicillin, phenoxymethyl penicillin, chloramphenicol and IIRC some erythromycin, although not much of it, and clindamycin, all save the erythromycin in multiple gram quantities, I really was hoping to be able to use some of those for my bioengineering work, as I am trying to go self employed, but the moggy's health comes first, as does any of the animals, from the spider, to the cat, and my project second.
If anybody again has appropriate doses in mcg or mg/kg, compounding any of the above into a cat-friendly form is not a problem. Well, in as much as giving any cat anything that isn't either A-disgusting. feculent, reeking muck to the human olfactory sense, or B-anything involving roast meat, or C-cat mint is likely to be well met
We just cannot afford to pay for what we may already have something suitable for. 'We' is 'ME', and at the moment the financial situation is bad enough that I don't always have food, and have to save for needed things slowly, very, very slowly. I do however have existing lab supplies and the like including antibiotics, and the means to measure them accurately.
Really could do with knowing if OTC vs rx-only flea-whacker formulations ever can be properly effective when in the form of house-treatment (as opposed to directly treating the cat), because the one the vet is selling, is £15, and I eat for a week off that.
