The Foster Kittens are Four Weeks Old, and Quarantine Guidelines Exist for a Reason

Beautiful Sage, shedding ringworm spores all over my couch...

Remember how last week I joked that we'd definitely ended the kittens' ringworm quarantine a week early and wouldn't we be sad/regret it if it turned out they actually had ringworm?

Hahaha yeah, you can see where I'm going with this...

family portrait on the kids' bathroom floor wearing the clothes I changed out of as soon as I left like a good cat foster mom

The animal shelter 100% told us to watch the cats for ringworm, and Dr. Google 100% told me that the ringworm incubation period is three weeks. But the two-week infection disease quarantine already feels soooo long, and we were so bored sitting on the kids' bathroom floor and changing into new clothes multiple times a day, and at four weeks old kittens are so cute and rambunctious and it's so fun to let them chase a ribbon across the living room floor and watch them wrestle on the couch and Ginger was going absolutely stir-crazy locked into a single small room with a bunch of kids.

And I mean, come on. I know the interweb SAYS the ringworm incubation period is three weeks, but that can't be right, on account of three weeks is boring and feels too long. I'm sure two weeks is perfectly fine!

So after the two-week infection disease quarantine was up, we had a lovely few days playing together all over the house. 

We got to celebrate Easter together:

I did remember to wash the quilt on hot, but I should probably soak that basket, too.

Ginger FINALLY got a break from the kids:

Yep, that's the desk I work at for half the day, every day.

The babies got more room to hunt and fight:

Why, yes, those ARE our couch cushions. You know, the ones where we rest our literal heads!

All over the kid, who's of course hanging out on my bed.

For Christ's sake yes that's my literal face. Just don't even talk to me anymore I'm too stupid to listen to words.

And we got to do tons and tons of my favorite activity, which is hanging out on the couch:

SO many couch cushions to wash in hot water and dry on high and then hang out on the clothesline in the sun just to be sure.

It was actually while we were hanging out on the couch, the kittens wrestling and chasing each other and crawling all over every possible surface that could ever possibly be contaminated, that I spotted this suspicious spot on my awesome little buddy Sage's arm:

Bare patch of fur with white-ish powder on it, the better to shed all over everything.

I swear, my lot in life is to never have a single moment of peace. I consulted with the animal shelter's foster program director the next morning to arrange to bring everyone in for a Wood's lamp test, and she told me that if they tested positive, it would be perfectly fine to return them. No foster family jumps with joy or anything at the idea of the pretty intense ringworm treatment, quarantine, and cleaning regimen, but there are foster families who are reasonably comfortable with it.

I'm not necessarily UNcomfortable with it, but considering that 1) the entire household is definitely exposed and most of our crap is definitely contaminated so I was already about to have to spend the next 48 hours doing nothing but cleaning, 2) within 72 hours we were about to have visitors who also probably didn't want to be exposed to ringworm, and 3) we are going to England soon and really, really, really do not want to have ringworm there, either, I decided that this wasn't the time to learn how to administer ringworm treatment to four foster kittens and one foster cat.

So the litter tested positive via Wood's lamp, my teenager and I said goodbye, I cried, and right now they're with a way more responsible family than us, getting their nice twice-weekly dips and twice-daily topical ointments and once-daily oral medicine and recovering from ringworm in plenty of time to be adopted right on schedule, and I'm still compulsively bleaching all the things that can be bleached and washing on hot all the things that can be washed on hot and looking suspiciously at things that can't have either and buying every tea tree oil bath and body product I can find while feeling a lot of random itches like the true hypochondriac I am.

And both kids have ALREADY been asking when we can get more foster kittens.

Just... after England, guys. Let's just not cause an international fungal incident and then we can spend the rest of our summer up to our itchy ears in kittens.