Maybe you think that your beloved kitten, living a cosy life in your sweet home and fed premium food, does not need to be dewormed. You’re wrong: the helminths are cunning, and wherever it is, your kitty is threatened!
There is no comparison between the life of an indoor cat, and the life of those animals which are still hunting, making feline encounters, and are sometimes contaminated by other animals of their kinds. Yet, the cycle of life of the helminths – of the worms – is such that even a cat living alone for a long time, can still be infested.
The first source of infestation in kittens is caused by a round worm called ascarid, which can be found in the small intestine, where it forms irritating balls. The very cunning ascarid hides its larvae in the queen’s muscular and mammal tissues and wakes up at the end of the gestation to contaminate the kittens when they’re sucking. What’s more, each adult worm can lay 24,000 eggs per day. They resist to the cold and to most of the disinfectant products, and they represent a potential threat for years. By now you should begin to understand why a perfectly safe kitten brought at home at the age of 3 months has every chance to be contaminated by ascarids, even if its breeder has carefully dewormed it. Then, a kitten rescued in the street or bred by someone ignorant of those matters, might be infested to such an extent that it can threaten its life.Your vet will tell you which vermifuge is the most adapted to the age, size and weight of your kitten. Until its first year, you should deworm your kitten every month. Then, you should deworm it every six months.
Besides the helminths transmitted by the mother and preserved in the muscles, the other most often encountered helminths in cats are the ankylostomes and the tapeworm. Both are transmitted through the ingestion of fleas when the cat is licking itself, or is licked by another. Hence the importance of treating your pet very often against the external parasites as well. In this case, the cats the most threatened are the cats, which go out and eat their prey.
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