Mites...want to ignore vet advice. Help!

[Naughtykitty]

Sorry this is going to sound so stupid but I just feel so sorry for my boy right now.

I took him to the vet yesterday and turns out he has mites in his paws and around his ears. She gave him another Spot On treatment and told me to keep him in for one week. He was a stray before and is outside almost all day only coming in the get a quick cuddle and some food. It's really stressing him out being locked inside and it's only been 1 day! He's crying constantly and looking for ways out. It's for his own good so I want to keep him in but at the same time for his own sanity I'm wondering whether to just let him out once in the day for a little while just to help him settle down.

When he doesn't go out he also starts fighting our other cat. I've had to split them up several times today already.

I guess I'm asking what you would do? Do we just grin and bear it? Or should I let him out for a little bit? Like just once in the evening and that's it? Obviously I understand the vet is giving the best advice and it would be silly to ignore but I just feel so sorry for him.

Can you play with him, knacker him out a bit?

I thought that too and have tried playing with him with all his usual favourite toys but he's just not interested. Just carries on scratching at the door x

Can you get one of those feliway things ? Might calm him down a bit. I think having taken him to the vets (and paid for the treatment and advice) it would be silly to ignore the advice. I would also try to keep him in one room, easier for you, and the other cat.

@viques yes I know you're right. I have tried Feliway before but it didn't work well for my cats. I think it was too much for them under the circumstances (long story). I'm going to try and keep him in for at least a few days and see how we go. It's just horrible to see you fur baby stressed out. X

What reason did the vet give for keeping him in ?

She said that keeping him in will prevent him from going in the hedgerows and where he's getting all of the mites while the spot on treatment kills the ones he has x

Mine gets a steroid injection to ease the itchiness, then life goes on as normal.

@AllAtHome is that for harvest mites? She just gave him a spot on treatment and that was it and then said if it doesn't go away then to bring him back.

I regularly use Frontline spot-on but it doesn’t kill mites. When my dog got mites I had to use the Frontline spray which has additional ingredients to kill mites. And it isn’t like the spot-on which spreads across the body to kill fleas - the spray only kills the mites it touches so you have to be thorough and cover the entire animal, then comb repeatedly for several days to check that no living mites remain.

I don’t know of any spot-on that kills mites. It might be worth checking with your vet.

Yes. She suffers each year. The vet said nothing helps long term -kill the mites, but she’d get reinfested when going out again. It seems cruel to keep her in (she gets them from July to September - we are surrounded by farmland). The next best treatment was a long term steroid injection to treat the symptoms. It seems to work and her suffering is gone. She sometimes has one and sometimes has two over the course of the summer.

The only way the vet said to kill them was some sort of dip (for the feet) or spray, but said it was undesirable, but I can’t remember why.
(Other than becoming reinfested again).

She used Spot on Plus/Advanced. Will that not get rid of them then?

I've still kept him in but do feel sorry for him being cooped up all day and night.

OP they will feed for 2-3 days then drop off and crawl away. So they will be gone regardless of whether the treatment worked. But as soon as your cat goes back out to the same place he will get re-infested by new mites. As far as I know there’s no way to prevent that.

Also (to my knowledge) the spot-on treatments kill fleas, ticks and lice but not harvest mites.

Yes there are spot ons that treat mites. Vets do have years of training for a reason you know.
Make sure you keep up with treatments to prevent mites again.

Which spot-ons kill harvest mites? Genuinely want to know as I was told there are none that kill them.

The only licensed treatment for harvest mites ( neotrombicula autumnalis) is frontline spray. I see cases every year and in 20 years have only been successful in treating with frontline spray applied directly from gloved hands to the area. I have never a cat in and never had an issue with reinfection.

Thank you. It's Stronghold Plus. I've attached the information leaflet.

I caved and I let him out. He was getting so aggressive with our other cat because the poor boy is so stressed is was getting really nasty. I'm going to keep him in again when he comes back but he needs to let off some steam!

@Lonecatwithkitten are you a vet? I'm just interested to know as if I'm wasting my time with this stronghold stuff I'd rather him go out. We're never going to be able to stop him going to those areas as we are surrounded by farmland. The vet said that only young cats or cats that are stressed get them. Is this correct?

Neotrombilcula are neither ear mites nor biting lice so no stronghold is not licensed and I am not aware of any evidence it is effective.
I am a vet.
I see neotrombicula in fit healthy cats who travel extensively and hunt a lot is is a factor of how they live their lives in fields. I assume we are talking about the small orange mites just visible to the naked eye almost looking like a crusty scab.
Very, very occasionally cats get sarcoptes mites this is incredibly rare and yes usually in immunosuppressed cats, but you need to do a deep skin scrape to find these. Stronghold maybe effective for these though in these rare cases there are other products that I would rather use.

I was told that spot ons don’t work on harvest mites at our vet school, I would expect them to be well informed. Frontline spray was what we were prescribed. I hate harvest mites, I get bitten alive every year and they are unbelievably itchy.

@Lonecatwithkitten yes that's exactly what it is. Harvest mites - the little orange ones. Do you think it's worth keeping him in then? Can I buy the frontline spray or does it need to be prescribed from a vet? He's stopped scratching so much but he is just miserable.

He has one eye but other than that he is a healthy young boy. We put a tracker on him a couple of times and he travels absolutely miles and does a lot of hunting in the hedgerows and in the bracken. It's no wonder he's so stressed out from being indoors when he travels so far each day!

@chemenger thanks for the information x

I think you have to get the spray from the vet, but try Pets at Home or online. You have to use it regularly. Our little boy used to chew his feet raw because of the mites and our grumpy old girl had an awful reaction to them on her tummy. We had soak little boy’s feet in hibiscrub solution, that was fun. They both had the steroid injection as well as the spray if I remember correctly. They hated the noise of the spray so we sprayed on a brush then brushed them. I think for paws I used to soak a cloth and wipe them. If he roams there isn’t much you can do but in our own garden there was a particular plant (weed if I’m honest, coltsfoot) which seemed to harbour the mites, the old cat was much better when we got rid of it. We are surrounded by fields and scrubby bushes, nothing we can do about that so the younger cat who roamed was always reinfected. We didn’t keep him in, he’d have gone mad. We don’t have outdoor cats now so just me being bitten. Nobody else in the family has any trouble with them. Did I mention how much I hate harvest mites? They really make August in the garden miserable for me, I sympathise with your cat!

Frontline spray is a prescription only product so you would need to get it from the vet. I wouldn't bother keeping in.