After Ringworm: DECONTAMINATION!

This weekend after Elliot left us for the cattery I was faced with my next fostering challenge; I needed to decontaminate our entire house to remove all traces of ringworm spores!

This may sound like a daunting task, but it is actually not very hard to do. Bleach kills ringworm spores on contact even in a very weak solution!

So how do you start?

You only really need three items to complete this task.
1. A squirt bottle
2. Bleach
3. Water

First gather up all cat toys, bedding, and supplies and spray them with a 10-to-1 solutions of bleach-water (10x water to 1x bleach). This strength of solution is color-safe but you still may want to do your own color test before dousing all your belongings.

Next throw everything that can go in the washing machine in and wash on HOT. Add a cup of bleach to the  bleach tray. The machine will automatically release it slowly so it will not ruin your fabrics.

Items that cannot be machine washed like bowls and hard toys should be soaked in hot water and bleach and then run through the dish washer. If they are not dishwasher safe hand wash them.

Once the cat items have been cleaned you have to focus on your surroundings. This is the more intensive part of getting rid of ringworm spores. You will need to spray down EVERY SINGLE SURFACE that the cat has had access to. This means your carpets, beds, couches, walls, cabinets, window sills, counters, etc. You will need to spray your bleach-water solution over just about every inch of your house.

I prefer to do this in shifts one room at a time. I also take LOTS of breaks.

For animals fosters who are going to be bringing non-ringworm animals into the area this is the MOST IMPORTANT PART of decontamination. However if you would rather not have to undertake this cleaning ordeal you can simply continue to foster other ringworm-positive animals, in which case this entire process would be unnecessary!

If you are not going to be bringing another animal into the area you may choose simply to let the ringworm spores die out on their own which takes about three months. I know plenty of fosters who just let the spores die off naturally; they would rather just take the chance that they might get an itchy spot or two and will buy the inexpensive topical cream to deal with it.