Coccidia Help

[Landon&Lucasmom]

On Sunday we picked up our snow Bengal kitten. We have to other 7 month old Bengals and our little black girl. We have our new kitten separated in our bedroom. I took him to the vet yesterday just to get him checked out before I introduced him to the crew and he was diagnosed with Coccidia. He is a little ball of energy, eating, drinking and going to the bathroom normally. I was shocked because I have been checking his poop since he arrived and it was normal. We were given medication and told to keep them separated until he is retested. I started reading up on Coccidia and am terrified my other boys and girl will get it. They have not been around him but everything I read says the cysts can live up to a year and cannot be killed with regular disinfectant. He is staying in our room that is carpeted and sleeping with us at night. Our bathrooms are way to small to keep an little active Bengal in. We have company staying with us for the holiday so we have to keep him in our room. I am afraid we can get the cysts on our clothes and carry it through the house and the other cats can get it. He is lonely all by himself so we play with him every couple of hours, but now I am just afraid we are risking our other cats. Has anyone dealt with Coccidia and had one cat that had it that was isolated and did not infect your other cats? I am also open to any tips! Thanks.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

I can't answer any of your specific questions, since thankfully I've never had to deal with this issue, but did a search for you and there are so many threads on this topic, in case no one replies. Here is just the first place of my search results:

Search Results for Query: coccidia

Have you posted your specific questions to your Vet? That would be a good resource.

Best of luck to you and your little guy (and the rest of the household)

 

[Mamanyt1953]

This is from VCA hospitals web site:

"Cats are frequently reinfected from the environment, so disinfection is important. The oocysts are very resistant to environmental conditions and disinfectants. The use of diluted chlorine bleach [one cup (250 ml) of bleach mixed in one gallon (3.8 L) of water] is effective. Be sure to test clean a small area of any affected materials since bleach can damage many surfaces. Steam cleaning may also be used to destroy oocysts. Be sure to remove any feces as quickly as possible form the environment to prevent reinfection."

So, steaming for soft furnishings, and bleach solution for hard furnishings. Actually, you can steam hard furnishings that would be damaged by bleach, if necessary.

 

[sivyaleah]

When we brought home our Maine Coon kitten at 16 weeks of age, she tested positive for coccidia but had no symptoms like your kitten. Apparently it's not uncommon for kittens to pick it up from their mothers who can harbor the parasite with no ill effects either via nursing or contamination from the litter box. The reason for being asymptomatic probably is that their core vaccinations had kicked in well enough to prevent illness but the parasite still would need to be eradicated to avoid passing it along to other pets or the potential of becoming ill if the cat itself does suffer an immune deficiency of some sort for other reasons.

Luna was treated for 10 days with an antibiotic (the name escapes me now - I wrote about it here and you can search it out). She had been in quarantine already from our resident cat so at least there was no worries of her passing it but it did extend her quarantine by over a week which kind of stunk for all of us. We did our best to keep her occupied and I'm sure she was pretty bored at some points but there was nothing that could be done about that.

As far as the life cycle of the parasite, my understanding is that as long as you remove feces asap from the litter box there is little chance of the parasite repopulating. It takes more than several hours to complete it's life cycle, the feces would have to sit for something like 12 hours for adults to emerge so if you remove the poop right away there's no possibility of this happening.

I really don't think you have much to worry about as far as passing along cysts from you to other cats. For one thing, adult cats do not typically become ill from coccidia unless they have immune system issues. The worst case scenario would be that they pass it back to the kitten. We cleaned, did the laundry; all bedding and clothing - the kitten was treated and that was that. Our other cat stayed healthy, Luna never got sick and tested negative for the coccidia once treatment was finished.

Talk to your vet. I think this is a lot easier to deal with than you have been led to believe especially if your kitten isn't exhibiting symptoms.