I’ve done the caring for him as an outside cat and it was incredibly stressful for me. A lot of labour and encourages him away from home. I just can’t do it anymore.
spoiler
I had to routinely don long clothes and gloves whenever I saw him then wash hands change out of clothes and shower fully with antifungal products and reapply treatment on my own lesions after. So much laundry on hot with sanitizer, and carpet shampooing. Frequent vacuuming. You have to regularly clean your house to prevent picking it back up from the environment so it’s a whole thing. And I can’t take constantly having to prevent reinfection after handling him. It was also hurting my mental health.
He refused the ringworm tablet hidden in food, I got two doses down the hatch by wrestling him but then the next two nights he started hiding from me and I had to go looking for him. At that point I realised “this is crazy”, dumped all the cat stuff on the owners doorstep and emailed asking them to take him to the vet.
I don’t think they have. I’ve handed over all the treatments I have which will be expensive and an hassle to get more of. (The tablets are prescription only and came from the rescue lady. That liquid requires a script to be uploaded to buy it and vets don’t prescribe to animals they haven’t seen. The lime sulfur dip alone was $50 and I don’t know if he’d let me bathe him.) And I’m not legally able to confine someone else’s pet for treatment or take him to the vet myself. They will have to do it.
And he’s still hanging around my door waiting to rub up on me or door dash in while contagious.
So unless I want to be on an endless ringworm reinfection treadmill (I really don’t) I am going to have to be a Karen, make a report to RSPCA or the council. And I’m worried about the backlash when I do.
This is actually kind of a nightmare. I can’t begin to tell you how much I didn’t and don’t want to deal with this.