Ear Mites

The kittens pictured below were a couple that I adopted from our local Animal Welfare last spring. The animal welfare did a wonderful job in giving the kittens there shots, spaying them and microchipping them. But they didn't check very good for ear mites. But then it took me all this time to realize that they had the ear mites, so maybe there was no sign of them when I got them. This is the first time in about 30 years that I have had a pet with ear mites. Dogs can get them, too. And before you ask - no - my dogs and other cats don't have the ear mites. I have checked several times.
The gray kitten would get in my lap and want to snuggle up to me and she would smell horrible. I assumed she had played in the litter box but it didn't really smell like litter box smell. Finally about 2 weeks ago she got in my lap and she smelled so bad I started to push her away but decided I had to figure out what was wrong. I checked her over including looking in her ears as I had noticed her scratching at them a couple of times but real bad at it. And YUCK. There were big gobs of yuck in her ears and I knew right away that it was ear mites. Ear mites are almost microscopic bugs that prefer to get in a animals ears and live there. The pet will scratch at their ears and body and there will stuff that is sort of like ear wax but more like a dirt in their ears and there is always that horrid smell if it goes on to long.
So I cleaned their ears with a cotton ball and got as much yuck out as I could. Don't use a cuetip as you can damage the ear drum. There is an over the counter medicine you can use to put in their ears to kill the mites. I got some at WalMart. I have used it every other day for two weeks. If not better by next week I will see if my vet can do something.
These are not fun. As a teenager we had ear mites in 2 small dogs and a cat that we had. As soon as we thought they were gone then they would start over again. I do think that the medicine they have now is better than it was then.