Ear mites

[Brird]

My cat seems to have ear mites - shaking her head, scratching more than usual, I think I can see some black bits in there. I can't flip back her ear to check, she won't let me. I can sniff her ear as she shoves it in my face, it smells fine.

I put some spot-on flea/mite treatment today. How long does it take for the scratching to start subsiding? I'm asking as I have a small amount of doubt it's mites (could be food allergy maybe), as I took her to the vet a week ago for annual check-up and he didn't see any. She could have picked them up at the vets I suppose. She is an indoor cat apart from about 2 minutes in the garden every other day.

With todays Morden vet flea treatments are really rare. I can't remember the last time I looked in an ear and saw a mite running around in there.
There are lots of other causes of the signs you are seeing bacterial/ yeast infection, polyps etc.
Really need a swab checked under the microscope to check what's going on.

Black bits in the ear doesn't necessarily mean mites - it can also be the start of an infection or just a build-up of dirt and muck.

We thought our kitten had mites a while ago (same symptom as you, plus discharge) and it turns out he just had really disgusting ears we were sent home with some antibiotic drops and some ear cleaner to use daily for a week and it cleared up in no time.

We still have the cleaner and the vet said to just check his ears regularly and clean them if they're starting to look gross.

Thanks. She's currently sulky and shouty about the treatment so I hope it works, or at least rules mites out. Not keen on another vet visit yet, the last one was tricky enough.

She did stop scratching so much for last couple of days but then last night she was driving me nuts shaking the bed with her scratching and wanting cuddling straight after regardless of it being 2am.