This is the story of a little orange cat with a few patches of missing fur. She came to the shelter in July 2010 as a stray at about two months old. We named her Mia Bella. She had an upper respiratory infection and some fur loss in patches. We began treating her for her cold, and in early August a test confirmed that she had ringworm.
Ringworm is not caused by a worm. It is an infection of the skin caused by a fungus. Ringworm is contagious. It spreads when you have skin-to-skin contact with a person or animal that has it. It can also spread on things like towels and clothing. So we began weekly lime dips and systemic treatment with intraconazole. Then another cat came in with patchy fur loss, and another. Finally, we had 21 cats with confirmed ringworm that were all undergoing weekly dipping, weekly testing, and systemic treatment. The cats also had to be quarantined from all other animals and people. So we converted our cat sick bay room and previous dog receiving room into ringworm quarantine 1 and 2.
Animal care technicians have to wear protective clothing including hair and shoe covers to go in these rooms to clean and care for the quarantined cats. Of course, this is in addition to caring for the 60-80 other cats in the shelter. We also began completely stripping, cleaning, and disinfecting the rooms with a bleach solution once a week. Sometimes animal care staff came in late at night to disinfect after everyone else was gone. Even with precautions, a few staff members caught the fungus themselves. We also instituted some new cleaning protocols in our other cat areas to reduce the possibility of contamination.
After five months of treatment and a set-back with a serious jaw infection that required surgery, Mia Bella finally was healthy enough for adoption. She moved out of quarantine into our main cat room and was soon adopted into a loving home. To date, nine of our 21 quarantined cats have fully recovered and eight of those have been adopted. We expect to have a few more weeks of treatment before all the cats are ready for adoption and we can close the chapter on the ringworm saga of 2010.
Our animal care technicians have risked infection, bleach fume overload, and exhaustion to save these cats and make them healthy. Administrative staff have helped out with regular cleaning so that animal care technicians could focus on the extra cleaning that the ringworm requires. We all hope we never see ringworm again, but if and when we do, we certainly know how to handle it.
