Worming Scare (was: Re: Cats that eat strange things - Pepper Sauce)

[Michael Cox]

We had to take our 10 month old kitten, Kitsch, to the out of hours vet last
night (at a cost of £47, doh!) because she had a very bad reaction to a
shop-bought worming product. We used Johnson's Twin Wormer for Cats. This
was a three stage treatment. A dose of Piperazine Phosphate, followed 7
days later by a dose of Diclorophen, followed 7 days later by a further dose
of Piperazine Phosphate.

She had a course of this treatment at six months old to which she has no
adverse reaction. When we gave the Diclorophen dose on Saturday she was
sick about six hours later. At the time we assumed this was due to the
pepper sauce (see Re: Cats that eat strange things) she had eaten from our
plates in the afternoon. So we redosed her yesterday at lunchtime
yesterday. Again she was sick about six hours later, but this time she
seemed to lose control of her back legs and was generally very wobbly. She
fell off the top of her scratching post, couldn't jump up onto the bed, and
was generally listless and subdued.

Thankfully when we got her to the vet, about an hour and a half later, she
had started to perk up, and after a quiet night without food she is much
better today.

We will never again try to economise on treatments for our animals again.
We will always go to our vet for flea and worm treatments.

Thanks for listening, we just wanted to warn people that treatments that you
can buy from a pet shop can go wrong.

Michael & Claire Cox & (a thankfully fully recovered) Kitsch The Cat.