Borax for Fur Mites on Cats

Several month ago our Katy started pulling out her fur. It was mostly on her lower back, and there were little tufts of fur everywhere. She was so obsessed with this that she practically did nothing else. She was constantly licking, biting, and pulling, until her lower back was starting to look bald. We examined her closely, but couldn’t see anything. Still, something was clearly wrong.

I researched this and found a number of causes. Stress is one of them.

Allergies is another cause. We already have the cats on a no-wheat, no-corn, and no-soy diet, so I stopped giving her milk. The problem continued.

Another cause is fur mites. When Dan found what looked like teeny tiny larvae in her sleeping spot, we concluded it was mites after all. I started looking for shampoos for this. In my research I ran across a homemade mite shampoo from Vetinfo. It called for 1 or 2% hydrogen peroxide, warm water, borax, and Vitamin E, mixed and applied to cat’s fur for several days in a row. It was said to kill adult mites, eggs, and larvae.

I didn’t have vitamin E, but I had the rest of the ingredients, so I mixed up what I had. It took the two of us to wrestle her down and work it into her fur, but it seemed to work. For awhile. Then she would start with the fur pulling again. I reckoned that to get rid of the problem once and for all we’d need to soak her in a warm borax solution bath and massage it into her skin.

Dan was skeptical that we could manage a bath, but being an old pro at giving cats baths, I said not to worry. I filled the kitchen sink with warm water and dissolved a handful of 20 Mule Team Borax into it. Then I picked her up and securely held her legs in my hands and lowered her in up to her neck. Dan worked it into her skin. We had a large warm towel at the ready and after we dried her off as best we could she took off like a firecracker and hid.

A little while later we found her on the bed giving herself a bath. I worried a little about her ingesting the borax, but I was also worried about the mites. After she’d dried herself off she went to sleep and slept all day. That was the first time we’d seen her actually sleep in weeks.

I laundered everything she slept on with hot water and borax so she wouldn’t re-infest herself. She stopped the incessant licking and fur pulling and her fur is gradually growing back. Amazingly, none of the other cats got it!

I was glad to find a simple solution without any fancy, expensive chemicals. Now if we could just find something similar to get rid of fleas…