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Cat advice, please


Dotty0
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Hello

Bit of a strange one this I'm afraid and hope you are not eating.  Here goes.  Was stroking my 5 month old, long haired tabby cat and felt a lump on his back.  On closer inspection, found a baked bean sized lump attached to his skin.  It appeared greyish blue in colour.  I gently moved it to see if I could persuade it to come off, but failed.  After trawling through countless websites, trying to find out what it was, I gave up, defeated.  This morning, I found another lump, this time on the base of his ear and a quarter of the size to the original.  However the large one had dropped off and had started climbing, yes climbing the wall.  It totally freaked me out and on closer inspection, I noted it had legs.  I managed ot pull off the smaller one and this too had legs.  Neither of these 'things' appeared to bother my kitty, but now I just want ot know what they are.

Any clues?

Thanks, Dotty

 

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These sound like ticks , yuk.

Hold your cat firmly exposing the tick.

 Heat up the tip of an old pair of tweezers in a flame, and clamp tick firmly. The heat will make it let go and you can them flambe the tick. It won't hurt your cat and is quicker , cheaper and probably less stressful for your kitty than a trip to the vets.

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Oh my gosh, that's so disgusting.  Thanks for the info.  But are ticks really that big.  Where on earth do they come from and do they breed on the kitties.  I have another cat, is he likely to have them.  I do use front line on the cats, should that stop them.

Many thanks again.  I think!

Dotty

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Chris

I do live very close to a forest and I understand form my neighbours that they have roebuck there.  Thing is my cats don't leave the garden, so how on earth did they get them.  We certainly haven't seen any deer.  Are you all quite sure that ticks get that big, I mean baked bean sized and they had a kind of grey/blue shell.

Dotty

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That's them alright, think of the colour of your veins only more grey. I get them on me quite frequently - hazard of the sort of things I get up to, worst of all they travel to the warm spots before "digging in".  The roe deer come out of the woods at night and roam around in the fields, the ticks drop of when they are well feed and when hungry jump on to the next passing hot body, whether that be cat,dog or human. I am still trying to figure out their place in the scheme of things!!!  I suppose birds eat them, that's something.

Cheers, Chris

 

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Hi Dotty

We have six cats and two dogs, on occasions our cats have ticks but we find Frontline works very well as long as you administer it on your aniamls each month on a regular basis. Whilst the tick will still attach to the animal they do fall off dead after 48 hours without any due concern to the cat. We do try and remove them before they attach themselves and destroy them, you need to use a sharp implement as stamping on them doesn't work. Good luck and yes they can be the size of a baked bean when full with blood but as long as you have fronlined the animal you should be able to keep them under control.

 

Sharon

 

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Thanks to you all.

Have found a picture on the web.  They are so disgusting.  My kids love the cats coming in to them in the morning to wake them up.  Well not anymore.  This is the first time we've had pets and so its all a bit new.  I've read that the large one is the female and the smaller one the male, that figures.  Anyway, do they breed whilst, you know on board?

Thanks

Dotty

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Apparently they can live for months, off the host, just waiting, lurking for heat and movement..............Similar to fleas, they can lay dormant between floorboards etc, in empty houses, waiting for new activity, we had that treat when we moved into our house recently.  Our house puss cats had never ever had such things, most disconcerting, more spray and frontline has been used than you can shake a stick at.........The vets said to frontline every two weeks when the weather is hot, once a month is not enough.  Frontline only lasts two weeks against ticks anyway, supposed to last 4 against fleas.  Not sure if that was a ploy to get us to buy more...........I was in there every two weeks, regardless, hopefully all sorted now.  Ticks are certainly large when they are gorged on blood, used to get them on us when walking in Scotland.  Off to have another shower now..........no more talk of crawly hoppy bugglies [:#]
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