Expert: Dr. Louis N. Gotthelf - 7/23/2010

Question
Hi

I hope you can help. Firstly I apologise about the length of this question but I felt you needed to know all the details. I rescued a kitten on the 10th July. I immediately took him up to my local vet to have him checked over. He is a little ginger cat around 6weeks old. He was totally infested with fleas and his ears were badly infected with mites.

The vest sprayed him with Frontline and all these bugs started to immediately crawl off him. The vet aslso administered an injection (im not sure what that was for) and gave me 3 syringes of wormer which i gave him as per instructed.

I have been feeding him and petting him regularly but i have kept him in my garage since I found him for fear of infesting myself and my house. I have also been giving him eardrops the vet gave me. I went up again yesterday and they gave me more and a drop for his eye as its weeping and sore looking.

My main queston is, i feel really bad leaving him in the garage alone and would like to get him used to my utility room, kitchen and living room asap so he can be a proper house cat but i am so scared of infecting myself and the house with whatever he has. I have been trying to clean him too as he doesnt seem to be doing it himself and is a little smelly and the hair round hisears looks dam and grubby. My local vet said it was best to keep him out for a while, which I thought was a bit vauge and the vets in my town have a bad reputation, therefore I tought it best to check with someone like yourself.

I hope you can advise me what to do with my kitten now, whether to keep him out or in the house and if there any additional acts of care i should be providing. I just dont want the little thing to die, become strange or give me some disease that I do not want.

Thank you.

Angela

Answer
You can let him in the house and use a water based flea spray for kittens.  That way, you can keep any live fleas on the kitty from infesting your house.  It may take a while for the ear mites to die.  Did they flush out the ears before having you using the eardrops?