Cat Skin Allergy Reaction To Clotrimazole

[haze n blaze]

long story short, my 4 year old cat, Haze Suffers with skin allergies. He just recently got over an URI. This always flares up his skin allergies too. Three weeks later, He had a spot on the back of his neck/shoulder blades that really looked like ring worm. He is not an outdoor cat and is on revolution so I took him to my vet. The vet could not conclude ring worm so while we awaited the culture, he went ahead and had me start clotrimazole solution on the spot which is a cyclosporine/antifungal. Due to his other hair loss near his underside and two years of battling the skin allergies, we also started atopica. After 4-5 days of using the antifungal, the spot tripled in size. I emailed pics to my vet because I was worried. He called and said he thinks it was an adverse reaction to the clotrimazole - which is rare according to him. He’s never had a cat have a reaction. So I stopped it and 18 hours later, the spot has gotten less red, less flaky and is decreasing in size. We are waiting to see how over the next few days how this responds before we determine next steps to treat what I originally thought was ringworm. Culture still pending. I just wanted to share my experience since it does seem to be a rare occurrence but DID happen. I just thought the ringworm was growing but instead it was actually a skin reaction.

Side note, the atopica has been working beautifully. No scratching, no vomiting, diarrhea or other GI issues like normal reactions to starting this med. fingers crossed as I reviewed some of the other posts on this site regarding atopica before starting him on it.

 

[FeebysOwner]

Glad to hear the atopica is working!

Hopefully, the culture will come back negative for ringworm - with any luck!! Here is a link to an article about ringworm - including mention of some oral (vs. topical) treatments. If he does have it, maybe an oral treatment might be a better option?

Ringworm in Cats

 

[haze n blaze]

Glad to hear the atopica is working!

Hopefully, the culture will come back negative for ringworm - with any luck!! Here is a link to an article about ringworm - including mention of some oral (vs. topical) treatments. If he does have it, maybe an oral treatment might be a better option?

Ringworm in Cats

Thank you for your response. My vet said he felt more comfortable starting with the antifungal topical until the culture came back. He said he didn’t want to give an oral antifungal until culture confirmed ringworm if I remember correctly it was due to the oral having a bit more side effects. I’m a bit of a helicopter cat Mom so I took Haze in at the first sign of what I thought was ringworm so I think my vet wasn’t entirely convinced that is what it was.

I think because my cat has FHV, he is just susceptible to everything effecting him.

 

[FeebysOwner]

He said he didn’t want to give an oral antifungal until culture confirmed ringworm if I remember correctly it was due to the oral having a bit more side effects.

I actually read the oral treatments tend to have less side effects - not sure why. But with Haze, that might not be the case!

 

[haze n blaze]

I actually read the oral treatments tend to have less side effects - not sure why. But with Haze, that might not be the case!

Yes, I think that’s it. Haze seems super sensitive to many things so perhaps the vet thought to start with the topical. Lesson learned!

18 hours later, here are the updated pics showing the reaction almost gone