I was sitting outside in the sun with my mom, and I was petting my cat. who likes to hang around with us. Especially in the sun.
Uh oh. What is this? A mole? A tumor? Something stuck on her skin under her fur as a result of her traipsing through our acres of weeds?
It looked a little like the tail end of a smooth (unsegmented) gray worm sticking out of the skin. Or maybe just a little pile of schmutz that landed between tufts of fur and stuck. I touched it with my finger. It moved
Uh oh. I go and get a pair of tweezers. Maybe I can pull it out, brave and stupid cat owner that I am.
Well, I did pull it out of what might have been a little hole in my cat’s back and placed in on the cement step. It looked like a small, smooth flat oval gray pebble, maybe one-half inch long. I poked it with the tweezers. What looked like little antennae appeared out of the end that had been on (or in) the cat’s skin.
I lifted my foot and smashed it. Splat. Well, a little splat. It was rather small.
After the fact, I googled around looking for what it might have been. The closest I could come was the botfly larva. If that’s what it was, oops. I wasn’t supposed to try to remove it by myself. Uh. Too late.
Only I’m not sure that’s what it was. I can’t find any hole or sore spot on my cat from where I removed the little creature.
I wish now that I had taken a photo of the specimen, before I splatted it, of course. Maybe someone on the Net could have identified it.
Maybe I’ll never know what the damned thing was, but I’m going to keep checking my cat for more moving bumps. And I’ll keep my tweezers handy.
Kalilily Time
Just an old lady talking to herself
A tick, probably the common dog tick, but there are others it could have been. They all look grey when engorged with blood. The little antennae were its head and legs. If you hadn’t pulled it off, it would have kept on sucking blood until it was full, and then dropped off. You’d never have known about it.
I’ve had botflies myself, and you wouldn’t see anything that big sticking above the skin. Also, they are uncommon as far north as you’re located.
Do watch your cat to make sure she doesn’t get an infected sore where the tick was pulled off. Sometimes, when you pull a tick off, you can leave its mouthparts and head still embedded in the skin, and these can get infected.
whatever you do, DON’T search for “bot fly larvae” on Google Images.
i guess it’s fairly likely you already have, in which case, i am truly sorry.
Actually, it seems like Rebecca is right because this is what it looked like:
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/862/45031939.JPG
I treat my cat once a month with flea and tick skin med, so perhaps the dog flea was already on its last legs (so to speak) because it came out very easily. Those botfly things are really gross. Glad it wasn’t that!!
Sounds like a tick for sure. No, you are not supposed to take those out by pulling. Ah well, you will get a second chance on that one.