Whack job cures

[klunick]

Anyone besides me try some "out of the box" cures for ailments? Our girl Torrie had a wart above her eye. Started out pea sized but would grow to the size of a jelly bean and then pop. The cycle kept repeating. Took her to the vet when we first noticed it and they basically said as long as it wasn't bothering her to leave it alone. Well, when it popped, it would ooze this watery liquid and look like a shriveled up balloon hanging down off her face. It didn't bother her but it bothered us.

I had heard and also read online that you can remove a wart but suffocating it with duct tape. I put some on the wart which Torrie hated. She ended up being resolved with it but it really only lasted overnight. In the morning, the tape was basically coming off so I just took it off. She lived with that wart for several more years. It would grow, pop, and return like clockwork.

Then something interesting happened. Our male died in February. We noticed that the wart was no longer growing and therefore never popped. Instead it shrunk and fell off!! She literally had that wart for almost a decade and it magically fell off???? We think what was going on was our male was licking it or somehow irritating the wart and causing it to grow and pop. Once he was dead and the wart got left alone, it fell off naturally. She (and us) got to enjoy her looking like her old pretty self until she passed in May.

 

[Caspers Human]

I'm not positive but I don't think that warts ooze fluid. It sounds like some type of cyst, to me.

Cysts are usually benign unless they get infected or injured but they can recur if they aren't treated or removed.
A hair follicle or pore in the skin gets clogged, becomes inflamed and fills up with fluid. The clogged pore expands and starts to grow as it fills with more and more fluid, eventually bursting and starting the process over again.

The body tries to defend against this problem by building up tissue that forms a small sac around the inflamed follicle, sealing it off from the rest of the surrounding tissue. It is this sac that can cause recurrences. If it is not removed, the process can repeat, almost indefinitely.

The problem is this: Your cat has fur. Not only does that make the problem of cysts more difficult to solve, you can't have an incision on your cat's face or else the fur might not grow back the same way and you might leave a permanent scar. That wouldn't be good. This means that, in many cases, it's best to leave well enough alone unless there is a problem that makes it necessary to excise the cyst.

That's probably why your vet said not to worry... because there isn't much to worry about.

I don't know why duct tape would have worked in your case. Maybe, like you said, the tape prevented your cat(s) from licking and grooming the area, reducing the stress on the area, allowing it to heal naturally. Maybe it had something to do with the duct tape preventing the fur around the cyst from blocking fluid drainage. Maybe it has something to do with one or more ingredients of the adhesive of the duct tape. I don't know for sure. I'm only guessing.

Long story short... I'm glad your cat is better and doesn't have that ugly bump on her face anymore!

Regardless of WHY it worked, the bump is gone and that's a good thing!

 

[klunick]

Well, she was better for a few months. She passed in May. I suppose it could have been a cyst but two vets said it was a wart. The tape didn't cure it. My other cat dying and not licking her wart anymore cured it.

 

[Caspers Human]

It certainly could have been a wart. Warts are caused by viruses and one cat licking another can transmit that virus from one cat to another.

If one cat is no longer present to lick the other and, potentially, transmit a virus, it is logical that warts will disappear.

I‘m just saying that I never heard of a wart oozing fluid, before, unless it has become infected. Warts grow, mainly, on the surface of the skin where there is little to no fluid. Cysts, on the other hand grow below the surface o the skin and can fill with fluid which can rupture and ooze.

It’s nothing like any wart I ever heard of before.

Just glad the problem went away!

 

[klunick]

It certainly could have been a wart. Warts are caused by viruses and one cat licking another can transmit that virus from one cat to another.

If one cat is no longer present to lick the other and, potentially, transmit a virus, it is logical that warts will disappear.

I‘m just saying that I never heard of a wart oozing fluid, before, unless it has become infected. Warts grow, mainly, on the surface of the skin where there is little to no fluid. Cysts, on the other hand grow below the surface o the skin and can fill with fluid which can rupture and ooze.

It’s nothing like any wart I ever heard of before.

Just glad the problem went away!

Yes. We were very happy to see it go.

 

[klunick]

Wow... do I feel like a crappy cat mom. Looked through years of photos to find one with the wart. Tons of photos of our male cat but only a handful of Torrie. I think it had to do with how gross the wart looked so I tended to only take ones where you could only see the other side of her face. Plus she was not as personable as her brother so not many photos could be taken.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

Not a crappy cat mom. And I'm sure you loved her JUST AS MUCH as much despite the "wart" or whatever it might have been! Maybe even more so. I remember when my kids were little and someone would ask, "Oh, come on, don't you REALLY have a secret favorite?" My answer was, "Of course I do! Whichever one is gone until he's back home again, or whichever one is sick, until he's well again!"