What You Need
Paper and Pencil
Damp Washcloth
Wood’s Lamp or Blacklight*
Magnifying Glass (or Camera)
A dark room (preferably one that will prevent the cat from escaping)
Steps
- Gather all the equipment.
- With the lights on, make a note of any areas where you see hair loss. Having an exam form that allows you to indicate where the hair loss (like this one) can be beneficial.
- It can also be helpful to feel around the cat without gloves, if possible. I often can feel areas that need to be examined long before I see any hair loss.
- Once you get an idea of areas you want to examine closer, turn off the lights. Using your blacklight, examine the cat. You are looking for individual hairs that are glowing. The glow is usually green, but can be whitish. Yellow glow is not ringworm.
- Areas of hair loss that do not seem to be glowing should be examined using a magnifying glass. If you don’t have one, try taking a photo with your phone (without flash). You can then blow up the image for closer examination.
- Use the damp washcloth on glowing areas around the eyes and nose to see if you can wipe it away. If you can, it wasn’t ringworm.
- If you find hairs that are glowing, you can pluck them and do an examination under a microscope.
- Document any areas of ringworm that you find. You will need to refer back to these notes over the next couple weeks so you can be aware of any new spots that have developed.
* You need a blacklight with a 320 to 400 nm wavelength. I prefer ones that have at least 20 LEDs. You can find them on Amazon like this one.