# Tips for lime sulfur dipping? Cats with ringworm



## Night Owl (Jun 19, 2010)

After trying oral medications and topical ointments to no avail (the oral meds made my cat sick and we had to stop them), I am going to have to use lime sulfur baths for my three cats, two of which are long haired. :-|

All the videos I found on YouTube are for kittens being dunked in buckets... that's not going to fly with my 14lb maine **** mix I am afraid. Was planning on using a spray bottle to soak their coat while having them stand in an empty litter box, then putting e-collar and keeping them in the bathroom or on the balcony with me (hot and sunny weather here) time to air dry.

Needless to say that's a daunting prospect... if anyone has done this before and has tips to share, that would be greatly appreciated!


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## RachelsaurusRexU (Aug 13, 2010)

That would probably work well. You could also hold the cat in a big rubbermaid type bin and pour the dip over him/her with a cup. You'd probably need another set of hands to hold kitty while you work the dip into the fur and skin.


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## snowy (Aug 23, 2012)

I would feel safer using colloidal silver, a natural antibiotic, antimicrobial, antifungus, tasteless and odorless liquid. I have used it on a FELV stray with ringworm before. CS can be used both internally and externally. You can spray on them all over externally, at the same time giving kitties straight orally. Google "colloidal silver for cats" or "how to administer colloidal silver on cats".


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## Night Owl (Jun 19, 2010)

I am actually using colloidal silver 200ppm already, but it doesn't seem to make a difference, and the spots are spreading. Also since two of the cats have lesions right over their eyes, they keep grooming it off. I try to put an e-collar on them for 30 minutes after applying, but colloidal silver should be applied 5 to 6 times a day, I can't keep all three cats in e-collars all day long -- it really freaks them out.


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## snowy (Aug 23, 2012)

Ohhh...sorry, so you have tried CS. I only used 30ppm for external, and I see result in 3days. I gave only 10ppm orally to a stray recently for loss of appetite and within less than 4days, he back eating normally. This particular kitty is hard to trap, so we had to give something fast and early 1st. The last time my friend tried daily for almost 2wks to trap him, in the end, mission still failed, but at that time, we didn't know about this colloidal silver thing. 

Lime sulphur is effective for ringworm, but wow! pray everything work out well and kitty won't start licking before you rinse thoroughly.


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## Luvmyfurbabies (Jun 25, 2012)

I've been through this nightmare and I can totally sympathize! Have you tried miconazole baths? This was the last thing we tried because like you nothing seems to work very well no matter how hard you try. I will say the miconazole baths did help quite a bit and helped keep his fur and skin from becoming dry. Honestly I feel ringworm recovery is more of a timing thing than anything. I've been told a cat will recover on their own with time. The problem with this is keeping it from spreading to everyone around them. Topical solutions take care of the outside but doesn't do anything for them internally to help fight it off.
You might try the miconazole baths in place of the lime sulfur dips. After months and months of trying to fight this battle I gave up stressing about it and let him loose in our house to run free and play even though we had two other animals and five people in our house. We all got it anyway even while he was confined. Once I made that decision it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I just bathed him once a week, and treated his spots, I kept the house clean and changed out cheap blankets where he normally laid and called it a day. 
I wish you the best of luck!


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## Mitts & Tess (Sep 4, 2004)

I would never do a sulfur dip. It reeks chemicals and seems so harsh on the skin. Plus it stinks to high heaven.

I would do the miconazole shampo and leave on conditoner once a week. Put topical ointment on it twice a day and do the colloidal silver too. I only had time to put CS on two to three times a day... dont worry if you cant do the 6 times a day. Throw the arsenal at it. 

It still took 2 months of weekly baths to rid my foster kittens of the ringworm.


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## Mitts & Tess (Sep 4, 2004)

I just saw this on the Urban Cat Leagues site and thought of you.

Medicating Feral Kittens - UrbanCatLeague

*RINGWORM:*
One of my professors told me, "It takes 21 days for Ringworm to heal if you treat it, and 3 weeks if you don't treat it." I found this to be true once treating two young feral kittens. One with sulfur dips and conifite lotion requiring repeated vet trips which terrified her. As a result, she was never comfortable being handled. Her sister was too feral for the vet techs to even handle for the treatments, and she healed on her own with good nutrition in the same amount of time. She is now a loving lap cat while her sister still hates being touched. One effective oral drug we've used, Itraconazole can be flavored at the Pharmacy and you can sneak it into the food for ferals. For years PROGRAM, a flea treatment, was being used to treat Ringworm but the recent vet literature says it doesn't work at all. For hard to treat ferals, we recommend you target good nutrition to build a curative immune system response if a vet treatment is impossible. It does resolve in time.


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## Night Owl (Jun 19, 2010)

Mitts & Tess said:


> *RINGWORM:*
> One of my professors told me, "It takes 21 days for Ringworm to heal if you treat it, and 3 weeks if you don't treat it."


I so wish this could have been true for me! My cat has had it for over two months now... the others resisted all this time but now two other cats have naked spots over their eyebrows. It's driving me nuts.

I did buy some malaseb (sp?) shampoo with miconazole and chlorexidine, I shampoo his neck (where the big spots are) and his ears/top of his head with it every three days for the past week. I wouldn't worry so much if I only had short haired cats, but with the amount of fur he has it would be quite a feat to shampoo his whole body. It's already a thrashing and drama fest to shampoo his neck and ears and let the shampoo sit for ten minutes before rinsing... I think I will do at least a couple of sulfur dips on each of the cats, it does help killing a big amount of spores on their whole body, which limits the shedding of spores in the environment -- even though at this point, I feel like every piece of furniture or carpet is covered in it!

Thanks a lot for the advice... keep it coming!


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## Night Owl (Jun 19, 2010)

Luvmyfurbabies said:


> I just bathed him once a week, and treated his spots, I kept the house clean and changed out cheap blankets where he normally laid and called it a day.
> I wish you the best of luck!


Thanks so much! I never kept him confined, I don't have the room to do it comfortably, didn't want to confine him to a bathroom for the weeks or months it would take to treat him. I completely agree though that when I stopped and took a deep breath and reminded myself that it is *just* a fungus and nothing dangerous, it really helped.

Just sucks because now three out of the four cats have it and I'll be out of town the second part of October, so they will go without treatment for that time. Can't ask my pet sitter to bathe the cats, she values her limbs too much.

I guess I wanted to kind of stall it before I leave, so I don't come home to half naked cats :-?


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## Night Owl (Jun 19, 2010)

snowy said:


> Lime sulphur is effective for ringworm, but wow! pray everything work out well and kitty won't start licking before you rinse thoroughly.


I believe you are supposed to pat them with a towel to absorb the excess liquid but you can't rinse it, it has to air dry. I bought an e-collar to keep him from trying to lick/groom his fur.


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## Luvmyfurbabies (Jun 25, 2012)

Night Owl said:


> Thanks so much! I never kept him confined, I don't have the room to do it comfortably, didn't want to confine him to a bathroom for the weeks or months it would take to treat him. I completely agree though that when I stopped and took a deep breath and reminded myself that it is *just* a fungus and nothing dangerous, it really helped.
> 
> Just sucks because now three out of the four cats have it and I'll be out of town the second part of October, so they will go without treatment for that time. Can't ask my pet sitter to bathe the cats, she values her limbs too much.
> 
> I guess I wanted to kind of stall it before I leave, so I don't come home to half naked cats :-?


When I had my baby confined it was in my spare bedroom that I had stripped down to just a full size bed and a desk. I bought him special toys that I felt okay about tossing and replacing regularly and a super comfy cat bed that I put in the middle of the full sized bed. I vacuumed the room every night including using attachments to get all the baseboards and then took the entire vacuum apart and cleaned the canisters and filters. I wiped everything including the attached bathroom he had access to with bleach and washed and changed out his bedding every night. Sometimes I wouldn't get to bed until 1 to 2 am every single night for 2 1/2 months! 
When I "finally got the all clear" that he was cured I let him out, about a month later after he had been shaved I noticed a crusty spot. My heart sank. I took him to the vet so he could be tested and 5 days later the culture came back positive for ringworm. I was heartbroken. Because after I let him out of the room. I took that bedroom apart and painted all the walls, the trim, closet doors and I also painted the bed! I took the entire bed apart and vacuumed and bleached it. ( did I say I was devastated? )
My vet told me at this point he needed a specialist. You see, Mr. Sophie was a Persian. And Persians are the hardest cat to have to recover from ringworm. Their bodies are missing something special that helps to fight it off. 
Do you know what the specialists advice was to me? Re-medicate and confine him for approximately four months. 
I just stewed over this. I confined him for about three more weeks doing all the rituals that got me to bed at 2 am. And then one day I just woke up and said: "that's it! I'm done!". I went to his room and opened his door and told him to start enjoying life. We were just going to live with this thing and whoever got it, got it. We had cream and if we got it, well that's what the cream was for.
Sad part of my story: my Mr. Sophie passed away about two months after I let him out of the room that second time. He was severely anemic and just stopped eating one day. After rushing him to an emergency vet after seeing my regular vet, he passed that night, and all the tests couldn't tell us what was wrong with him. There is more to this story, like I adopted him from a pet event with no intention of adopting an animal that day but I did because he was in such horrendous shape that I felt in my heart he would never be adopted. My main concern was the shape of his coat and skin. I didn't want to bring home animal with something contagious because it wouldn't be fair to the animals I already had at home. I was told the scabs and missing hair patches were from being shaved because he had terrible mats that caused razor burn. ( but that was not true, he had ringworm ! )

I tell you all this because, for me, this was a journey of sorts. I made a commitment to this animal that I didn't know and was determined to get him well. In the process of sweat, tears, mucho expense , tears, little sleep, ( did I mention tears? ) I fell utterly and completely in love with my Mr. Sophie. I would do it all again just to have him back with me. Sometimes I wonder, "what was it all for?". I'm convinced it was to show him love. Best little guy ever! Keep the faith, it will get better, it may take a year, but you and I both know it's just a fungus.


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