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Ectoparasite arthropods on cats/dogs zoonotic #834478
Asked June 08, 2023, 4:05 AM EDT
In asking this, I realized I can’t ask all in one, so I’ll have several submits for each issue, but they are somehow related. This all began only last summer.
We live on 30 acres in Texas. Four in/out dogs and I rescue kittens and we have barn cats. All get topical prevention but not always consistently on time. The inside cats just started going outside if they want. In/out. Last year the dogs had odd skin issues with sores, loss of hair. Did not match any of the normal treatable conditions. One odd thing - when sprayed with hydrogen peroxide, white forked tails came up all over, then dried into a hardened, clear plaque on the skin. Giving them topical wormer and preventative as well as applying Vaseline over and over to all areas solved the issue.
On the cats, there was more of an issue with a shrimp like organism that could be seen creating lines in their fur, actually twisting the fur like a braid along the lines, chewing the edges. I could see it with microscope. They were burrowing under the skin leaving raised lines and thick black antennae protruding through skin. Anywhere I saw two black antenna, there was a problem.
I did the same treatment as the dogs to resolve this. The things would come out of the skin and die on the fur. looked like dead shrimp.
Prior to treatment, the cat would bite at it, scratch, bite its own fur off trying to get it out. The fur along the tunnels looked chewed and frayed. After a while it was easy to spot them early with the fur appearance and their twitching the fur. Now I can tell before it starts because they get less active, their eyes get a full appearance, generally not happy. One gets sores on her ears. The others don’t.
This was the first time we’ve experienced this. It’s now summer again and one of the dogs who stays outside already had the issue on his belly, even with a huge lump filled with these things. They were the arrow things with split tail, antennae.
At one time the antennae near the face visible, worms would wiggle from the eyes, nose, mouth and ears. One photo of an eye, that occurred while I was in another room for 2 minutes and splat, his eye was covered in this jelly stuff. He still has recurring i issues with that eye. I’ve pulled the jelly thing out and even a brown worm. I find things on them sticking out of their fur and grab it and it oozes into a jelly. See yellow cat photo.
one of the cats has the same thing but it’s black and almost looks like a lizard. It attaches to the fur and affects her rectum. I can comb it off and it leaves a goop on her fur and the comb has goop. It comes back though.
Whatever they are, it’s zoonotic because I have cutaneous emergence of something head to toe. No answers. But I don’t want a repeat of last summer with my pets. If I can ID this and eradicate it from here that’d be great.
I’ll have to submit in several questions due to photo limits, so this one will be regarding the worms in the face. When I try to grab them, they retreat.
Hardin County Texas