Animal Welfare Professionals

As the volunteer & foster coordinator for our shelter I am always looking for more ways to recruit foster parents. Realizing there are never enough fosters available, we are doing fairly well with recruiting kitten fosters, except for ring worm kittens.  We supply absolutely everything including veterinary care throughout the process.

What are ways to recruit fosters for ring worm kittens?

#AccesstoCare
#CommunityCatManagement

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Simone Maynard
Volunteer & Foster Coordinator
Harker Heights Pet Adoption Center
Harker Heights, Texas
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I am new at fostering again after a 20+ year hiatus. My first set of rescue kitties had ring worm.  I am not saying it has been easy and I did get ringworm myself.  I believe providing some basic guidelines of how to handle ringworm cases that ease some of the internet panic out there may help. For instance, providing guidelines about how long and how to separate foster kitty groups that have ring worm from other foster kitty groups, best practices about washing and cleaning the environment and treatment protocol. Information about what the oral medicine does versus the lime sulfur dips versus lime sulfur cream would also help. 

When I brought them home from the shelter, the kitties were going to be up for adoption the following day and they had not been cured of ring worm yet.  For the first few weeks I wore gloves every time I picked them up, then I just resorted to washing my hands after handling them. After a few weeks of treatment, my kitties only had spores showing on their head so I continued the 7on/7off with oral but just used the lime sulfur cream on their faces & ears. 

After a Wood's Lamp did not show anymore bright green spores, I thought I was in the clear and started cuddling the affected kitties against my chest.  Guess where the ring worm showed up on me... my chest.  

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Danielle Clark
Foster
SOS Cat Rescue
TX
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Hi Simone,

So glad you asked! Finding ringworm fosters can be tricky, but I think the way you talk about it is one of the most important factors. Working with different organizations it's been super eye-opening to see one group have no trouble finding fosters for kittens with ringworm, and another really struggling...both in the same community.  Several years ago I fostered pretty heavily for one organization that was transferring in pets straight from the Iso unit at a local shelter. We probably had 50 cats and kittens with ringworm come through our house and were able to keep our own 7 pets and us from catching it.  The only time one of my cats ever got it was when we fostered a healthy cat and found out he had ringworm after we'd introduced him to my pets (and even then, it was only transferred to our super senior kitty).

Anyway, I hope the attached document is helpful, and here's a link to a short video on ringworm that you can share with your fosters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfwgibXkep8&list=PLE5ezCx0PBCn-w_VXyJNOl51R8LtBXxiO&index=9

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Kelly Duer
Senior Shelter Solutions Specialist
Maddie's Fund
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