Does Your Cat Constantly Shake Its Ears? How To Clean A Cat's Ears?

2023 Author: Molly Page | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 22:49

When a cat suffers from ear mites, it becomes restless, constantly combing its ears with its paws. So what kind of enemy is this - the ear mite (Otodectes cynotis)? Ticks are microscopic arachnids that live on the skin or ear canals of a cat. You can see them with a magnifying glass. They appear as small yellowish-white dots slowly moving along the inner surface of the auricle. When examining the ear, the veterinarian usually uses a compound magnifier or orthoscope. The causative agents of this disease live in the external auditory canal and feed on the remnants of the skin (epidermis). Usually, a cat has mites in both ears.

A characteristic symptom of ear mite infestation is intense itching, in which the cat violently scratches the ears and shakes its head. In especially advanced cases, he can even comb his ears until they bleed, so unbearable itching torments them. If the cat constantly rubs the skin between the ears and between the ears and eyes, this can cause loss of all hair on the shells, there may be foci of subcutaneous bleeding (hematoma), which must be surgically removed, otherwise, as the sores heal, the auricle will shrink and take on an ugly shape.

But that's not the only sign of ear mite infestation. Another sign of the disease is the presence of a dark brown plaque in the ear, it resembles coffee grounds in its structure and looks just like brownish dirt in the ears of a cat with an unpleasant odor.

The more the ears are affected, the more painful the cat will be, the more it will be from these ticks, so it is always best to remove ticks at the initial stage and never delay treatment. As soon as some dark deposits appear there, some black dots are ticks.

How to clean your cat's ears of ear mites? To do this, you need to buy a special preparation for the ears - called "Bars", sold in pet stores. This is a special liquid with which we will clean the cat's ears. We also need boric acid in powder form, it is sold in pharmacies in small sachets and is cheap. You can clean the cat's ears with cotton swabs, but the cotton wool only "strokes" the surface, and the plastic stick is flexible - effectively clean the ears with a piece of bandage on tweezers.

After all this is prepared, take a bottle of "Bars", pour it into some small cap and put it next to where you will carry out the procedure.

Then take boric acid (we will pour it into the ear after cleaning). How is this done technically - you take a small piece of paper - about the size of your palm, you can make it smaller, fold it in half, pour a pinch of boric acid inside, on one side you can clamp it with a paper clip so that the powder does not spill out. Make these 2 pieces of paper with powder inside and put it where you will clean the cat's ears. Then it will be very convenient to pour boric acid directly into the cat's ear from these pre-prepared pieces of paper with powder - but we will do this at the very end, so let these 2 pieces of paper lie down for now, waiting for their turn.

Everything, the tools for successful treatment of the ears are ready, then we go to prepare the cat.

Cleaning your ears is a rather unpleasant procedure for a cat, so before starting it is important to take precautions to protect yourself from your pet's claws, because it is for sure that she will pull out of your hands during the procedure. How are the precautions taken - this is done very simply - some thick bedspread, cape, plaid are taken - whatever, even a towel, the main thing is that it is thick enough (so an ordinary sheet will not work). The cat's paws are pressed to the body and after that you wrap the cat in this blanket, as if swaddling it so that only its head sticks out. It is very important to swaddle her paws so that she cannot scratch you with them. To keep the bedspread and not fall off, you can tie it with some kind of string or ribbon around it.

When you have done this, you can start cleaning your ears. Of course, it will be easier if someone helps you - to keep the cat in the right position, to hold her head, because she will constantly jerk her and try to escape. But if there is no one, you can carry out the procedure alone.

Ear mite in a white kitten

After the cat has been wrapped, we can safely proceed to the very cleaning of the ears. We do this in turn - first one ear, then the other. We wrap the cat's ear back so that the inner surface of the ear is visible, then we take a cotton swab or a bandage on tweezers, dip it in the Bars solution from our prepared cap, and clean the brown plaque from the ears with this stick. Clean your ears with these cotton swabs, remove dark plaque - first scrape off large particles of plaque, then smaller ones.

As soon as the cotton on the stick gets dirty, we replace the cotton swab with a new one. And so on until the ear is completely cleansed.

It will be very unpleasant for the cat - the more affected the ears, the more painful it will be, but one way or another, you will have to clean everything early, no matter how unpleasant it is for the cat, so do not stop if the cat protests and tries to interfere with you in every possible way.

Attention! Do not push the cotton swab too deep into your ear - you may injure your eardrum! Clean only that dark plaque that is visible from the outside with the eye, and do not climb into the ear canal !!! Otherwise, it may end badly for the cat, because damage to the eardrum can lead to hearing loss.

When you have cleaned both ears in this way, you need to perform another procedure. To consolidate the results, you also need to fill the cat in each ear with a little boric acid, which we have already prepared in advance. We just pour the powder from the prepared paper into the cat's ear, and not into the ear canal, but precisely on those places that were affected by the ear mite - we fall asleep like powder. The cat will shake its head, but this is just fine - this will spread the powder evenly throughout the ear. Part will spill out of the ear, and only the necessary amount of boric acid will remain in the ear, which is necessary.

This procedure should be carried out 2-3 times a week for the first week, then once a week, then once a month, and so on, less and less, until the ticks completely disappear from the ears. Mites can migrate to other areas of the body, so it is useful to spray powder or aerosol all over the body.

Inflammation of the ears is much less common, but infestation of ear mites always causes ear inflammation. It is best to contact your veterinarian to find out the true cause. He will prescribe the necessary treatment.

Editor: veterinarian, candidate of veterinary sciences V. Aronov - tel.: (812) 923-86-80, mob. +7 (911) 923-86-80.