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Jan

Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 24
Location: North East England

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 05 4:36 pm Post subject:
You could always use frontline spray, dab a little bit on the tick & it will die & drop off, easier than fiddling round with tweezers, gadgets etc & it will prevent your cat getting any more as well.

Res

Joined: 07 Apr 2005
Posts: 1172
Location: Allotment Shed, Harlow

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 05 4:49 pm Post subject:

Jan wrote:

You could always use frontline spray, dab a little bit on the tick & it will die & drop off, easier than fiddling round with tweezers, gadgets etc & it will prevent your cat getting any more as well.

After looking at those articles, it seems that speed is the essence and they should be removed ASAP. How quick does the frontline stuff work? and does it cause the tick to excreate inffected saliva after being treated? if so, this is not good.

Jan

Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 24
Location: North East England

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 05 4:58 pm Post subject:

Frontline works immediately, if you actually dab on the tick it dies straight away though it doesn't usually drop off till the following day, I don't know about saliva etc, but I've used it before on my ferrets and dogs and it works. Much easier than fiddling about with tweezers. If your animals are protected with frontline they shouldn't get ticks in the first place, its safe with ferrets so it must be ok for cats.

Res

Joined: 07 Apr 2005
Posts: 1172
Location: Allotment Shed, Harlow

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 05 5:02 pm Post subject:
Brill

Sarah D

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 2584

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 05 5:29 pm Post subject:

The easiest way, and most painless for both parties is surgical spirit - you should ahve some in the frist aid box or whatever. Soak a piece of eg kitchen/toilet roll in it, hold it over the tick, press down, and the tick will immediately retract it's bits from the cats and you can get it removed quickly and intact. I've been using this method for years and it's never failed - cheap and easy too. The surgical spirit can be used to clean pierced ears/earrings too, by the way.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 05 5:45 pm Post subject:
Well surgical spirit is just ethanol (booze alcohol) plus enough methanol to render it unfit to drink. I was sure I remembered using alcohol, but it seems that is "an old wives tale", ineffective, etc. Glad to hear your local ticks haven't caught up on the latest thinking yet, Sarah D!

wellington womble

Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 05 7:05 pm Post subject:

Can second the little plastic thing from the vets - it does get the head out, when you twist it (I found one on my dog this very morning, and observed it crawling around complete with head after wards - then you get to squish it - yeuch!)

Our dogs out frontlined once a month, and this is the first tick I've found, since we had an infestation when they were small. the thing about stuff that make them drop off is, where do they drop - personally, I'd rather squish then where I can see them, and not find them in the bed in hte midle of the night. Its dead easy, and the dogs don't seem to feel a thing.

saffranne

Joined: 23 Aug 2005
Posts: 428

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 05 9:19 pm Post subject:

i agree about the frontline though,i have six cats and three dogs plus my son's two bengals who does come to us for weekend and they are all on stronghold and frontline,although the bengals are housecats and three of my six are the same but we have a lot of sheep behind our house and obviously lots of ticks about and we have to walk through a herd of sheep everyday when we take the dogs out.,so far we have not come across any ticks or anything else on the animals

Millymollymandy

Joined: 23 Sep 2005
Posts: 187
Location: Brittany, France

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 05 5:58 am Post subject:
I have a tick widget and I remember the instructions said to twist anticlockwise. I've not idea why but it works every time. Found a tiny tick on my arm recently but I removed it with my fingernails! It was too small for the widget.

Wombat

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 396
Location: SW Cheshire

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 05 7:27 am Post subject:
I have always used the "surgical spirit" method, as recentley as two weeks back when we & dogs got back from a few days walking in the Lake District. Found 3 feeding on my Spinone. Dose in surgical spirit for a minute or so, tick releases, use tweezers to pull off grabbing tick as close to the head as poss. Always works, Old Wife

Naomi

Joined: 26 Mar 2005
Posts: 1945

Posted: Wed Dec 28, 05 4:36 pm Post subject:

If you don't have any surgical spirit you can use any strong alcohol like vodka or whisky . I works just as well! (Seems a waste, but you only need a tiny bit)
You must get the mouth parts out when using tweezers, as it creates a site for infection if it is left embedded in the skin.
So I agree with Wombat, get as close to the dog or cat's skin as possible,enabling you to remove the mouthparts of the tick when removing it!

Special tick tweezers are available from good pets stores or your vets surgery too.

Leonie

Joined: 13 Sep 2005
Posts: 731
Location: West Sussex

Posted: Wed Dec 28, 05 4:50 pm Post subject:

Sarah D wrote:

Absolutely the best way! We had to deal with lots of ticks in SA and found this the quickest and best way to deal with them.

fenwoman

Joined: 12 Dec 2005
Posts: 509
Location: Tydd St giles

Posted: Wed Dec 28, 05 9:18 pm Post subject:
When oi wuz a little gurl. I lived in Aden and would hang about with a small pack of feral dogs who were always covered in ticks. They would sit patiently for hours while I picked off ticks which hung in clusters like bunches of grapes behind their ears. Pick and pop, pick and pop. God I was a revolting child

gingerwelly

Joined: 08 Dec 2005
Posts: 419
Location: Wales ...in cardiff at the mo but from mid wales

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 05 1:03 am Post subject:
yeh surgical spirit is the best way to go ...spent a few months in oz, each night i would have to sit there and remove ticks from my legs.. a drop of surgical spirtit on their bum .. then after a few mins they would remove their head from your skin... then you can flick them into the fire ...and they pop !

tawny owl

Joined: 29 Apr 2005
Posts: 563
Location: Hampshire

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 05 9:25 am Post subject:

dougal wrote:

Well surgical spirit is just ethanol (booze alcohol) plus enough methanol to render it unfit to drink.
I was sure I remembered using alcohol, but it seems that is "an old wives tale", ineffective, etc. !

You're absolutely right to check that out, but I'm doubtful about the accuracy of the 'about.com' pages - I've found things in there I know are absolutely wrong before.

As it happens, the Dog Rescue Network, Patient UK, and several other sites still recommend Vaseline or other suffocating-type product, but then others don't, so what to do?

We used to use firelighters (the white ones), which I think have paraffin in them. Just stroke the firelighter very gently over the tick, and it lets go in seconds. It certainly seems it's a lot better to try to persuade it to let go than try to remove it by force and risk leaving bits of it in the wound. The problem about regurgitating into the wound seems to be a problem only in areas with Lyme disease.

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