A cat owner has been left baffled after spotting what looked like a ‘spot’ developing on their feline’s neck, with fellow pet lovers urging the cat owner to take the furry creature to the vet immedietly.
As devoted pet owners, our primary concern is ensuring our beloved companions are happy and healthy. While some animals are good at expressing their emotions, detecting signs or symptoms of illness can prove challenging.
For this reason, conducting regular health examinations of your pet proves essential to ensure everything remains normal. This prompted one cat owner’s discovery of something rather unexpected.
Posting on Reddit’s ‘Cat help’ community, the concerned pet parent shared an image of their black cat while inquiring about a ‘pimple’ they’d found.
“Should I be concerned? My outdoor cat has this long pimple looking thing…” they wrote on the post.
They continued by describing the cat as a one-and-a-half to two-year-old neutered male who frequently ventures outdoors.
“It’s been growing on him for 3 days now and has the feel of a long corn kernel. Is there anything I can do for him and should I be worried?” they questioned, explaining they hadn’t approached their vet due to being a ‘broke student’, though promised to gather funds for any necessary treatment.
“It looks like a tick,” one user observed, with another user agreeing: “My immediate thought.”
Another user, claiming to be a vet, agreed that it appeared to be a tick, and further cautioned the cat owner about diseases carried by ticks.
The cat owner soon returned to the comments section to disclose what the enigmatic ‘pimple’ turned out to be, following advice from other users.
“I CANNOT THANK EVERYONE ENOUGH for the detailed answers!!! I had to wrestle with him but I looked up a video and yanked this sucker out. THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH!!” they penned, sharing a photo of a large tick held in a pair of tweezers.
They continued to say that they’d also cleaned the area with soap and water, and planned to take their cat to the vet as soon as possible.
“Glad to see that you managed to remove it with your head, but still order a tick remover just in case, there is always a risk of regurgitation with the tweezers, even if cats are less fragile than us when faced with this kind of creature and its bacteria,” one individual commented.
Others urged the cat owner to stay current with any flea and tick treatments, given the amount of time the cat spends outdoors.
The Blue Cross advises that while ticks are rarely dangerous to cats, they can transmit bacteria and microbes when they bite, leading to diseases such as Lyme disease and babesiosis. As a result, it’s recommended to use a tick treatment on your cat that will either repel ticks or kill them swiftly if they attach.