Oly Camp Kitties

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Oly Camp Kitties Providing spay/neuter & basic health services to the cats of Olympia’s houseless community.

This is a GREAT opportunity, friends! Free vaccine clinic! People are ALWAYS asking us where to get cheap or free vaccin...
10/14/2026

This is a GREAT opportunity, friends!

Free vaccine clinic!

People are ALWAYS asking us where to get cheap or free vaccines.

Here you go!

🐾 FREE CAT & DOG VACCINE CLINIC! 🐾

Joint Animal Services is excited to share an opportunity for our community to get their pets vaccinated at our FREE Cat & Dog Vaccine Clinic, sponsored by Friends of JAS!

Date: Monday, November 2, 2026
Time: 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM
Location: 3120 Martin Way E, Olympia, WA 98506

A few important details:
Maximum of two animals per household
Appointments are required

Ready to sign up? Scan the QR code on the flyer to request an appointment!

Help us keep our community’s pets healthy and protected. Please share this post to get the word out!

🇮🇹 I am in Italy right now, and I noticed something while walking around Florence.Almost nobody was sleeping on the stre...
10/13/2026

🇮🇹 I am in Italy right now, and I noticed something while walking around Florence.

Almost nobody was sleeping on the street. After hours and hours of walking I saw two people sleeping on the sidewalk. TWO PEOPLE.

That’s it. In a city of nearly 400,000 with millions of tourists moving through it.

So of course I had to look into it.

Italy ran its first real homeless count in January 2026. The Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) and the Italian Federation of Organisations for Homeless People (fio.PSD) counted across 14 metropolitan cities - Rome, Milan, Naples, Florence, Turin, Venice, Palermo, and more.

10,037 people total, in all fourteen cities combined. About 55% in night shelters, 45% on the street or in makeshift arrangements.

For comparison, King County, Washington alone counts more than that.

So what gives?

Well, it's mostly upstream, and it has very little to do with their homeless services system.

First off, family absorbs more. Multigenerational households are normal here in Italy. Adult children stay home far longer. When someone loses a job, there’s a couch, often permanently.

Homeownership is around 75%, much of it inherited and mortgage-free. That eliminates a HUGE category of housing instability.

Healthcare doesn’t bankrupt anyone. Medical debt as a pathway into homelessness doesn’t exist.

And... this is a big one... a UNESCO-listed tourist city has strong incentive to keep its historic center clear.

But there is something else to consider.

Of people counted on the street, 70.5% were foreign nationals. The safety net works beautifully for people who are inside it. Migrants are outside it.

And fio.PSD’s 2025 report, titled “The Invisible Massacre,” recorded 414 people who died on Italian streets that year. Death from external causes among homeless people runs about ten times the general population rate.

Also notable: Italy’s Housing First network is roughly 47% nonprofits, 33% Caritas, 12% other religious groups, and only 8% public bodies. Their services system leans far harder on the church than ours does.

So, in a nutshell:

Fewer people outside is real here in Italy. But it’s not because they built better shelters.

It’s because fewer people fall that far in the first place.

Family structure. Housing tenure. Healthcare. The things that catch you before you ever need a shelter bed.

Which is the argument we keep making at home in Thurston County. Visible homelessness is downstream. You can spend forever managing what you see on the sidewalk, or you can fix the conditions producing it.

Italy didn’t solve homelessness, they just have fewer people in free fall. 🐾

- Whitney, Oly Camp Kitties

🌿 Jungle Outreach Report - SundayThank you to Lane, Rama, Katie, and Carrie for a great visit yesterday!We went clockwis...
10/12/2026

🌿 Jungle Outreach Report - Sunday

Thank you to Lane, Rama, Katie, and Carrie for a great visit yesterday!

We went clockwise this time. We alternate direction deliberately, because we inevitably run out of food somewhere around halfway to two-thirds of the way through, and switching direction means different households get reached first each time. The wagons only hold so much!

🏠 Something that matters more than cats

Early in the route we met a resident who asked for food - not for himself, but to pass along to a friend.

While we were chatting, it came out that he had been offered a placement at Maple Court and missed his appointment.

We are reaching out to the city about it.

This is a thing we see over and over, and it is why we wrote recently about why people “turn down” housing. He did not refuse. He missed an appointment while living in a tent, with no reliable phone, no calendar, and no address where a reminder could reach him.

From a spreadsheet, that looks like declining help. From the ground, it looks like a scheduling problem with enormous consequences.

If we can get that reconnected, this one outreach visit will have been worth more than all the cat food in the wagon.

🐱 The cats

We left food at several sites, including for the neighbors who have stepped up to feed a former client’s cats after she had a stroke and could not return.

One of those cats is a little tripod girl we have been trying to get close to for weeks. We saw her. She kept her distance.

We will be back for you, friend. 🧡

At another site we left a lot of food - this household has at least a dozen young adult and adult cats, plus two litters of very small kittens. On a future visit we are going to ask whether she will talk with us about her concerns around spay and neuter. She has not told us what the hesitation is, and we are not going to push. But we would like to understand it, because that household is a significant share of the cat population in that part of the camp.

✂️ And we started signing kitties up for the November clinic!

Preliminary numbers so far:

🔹 Four cats from one household - three kittens and their mama. They are friendly with their person but we may leave kennels there in advance so she is able to get them contained when the day comes.

🔹 Four kittens from another household.

We are going to start weighing kittens on upcoming visits.

Kittens need to be two pounds to be spayed or neutered. So we need to know whether these babies will hit that weight in time for the November 9 clinic, or whether we need to plan for a later run.

That is the kind of unglamorous logistical detail that determines whether a surgery actually happens. Weigh the kittens. Do the math. Book accordingly.

For food:
🛒 Our Chewy and Amazon wish lists are on our Donate page, and gifts ship straight to our door
💰 olycampkitties.com/donate · Venmo

💵 And if you want to fund a surgery, $125 covers one cat completely - spay or neuter, rabies, FVRCP, flea treatment, dewormer, and a microchip. We have a big clinic coming November 9 and those slots are filling.

Thank you, Lane, Rama, Katie, and Carrie. And thank you, community. 🐾

🎃 Halloween season is almost here, Olympia - and downtown is going all out.**LoveOly Downtown for Halloween** kicks off ...
10/12/2026

🎃 Halloween season is almost here, Olympia - and downtown is going all out.

**LoveOly Downtown for Halloween** kicks off this Friday, October 17, and runs through the 31st. All of it is free, all of it is family friendly, and pets are invited.

Here's what's coming:

---

🔍 **DOWNTOWN SCAVENGER HUNT - October 17–31**

Two full weeks to explore downtown. Perfect for a weekend with the kids, and a genuinely good excuse to wander into shops you've been meaning to check out.

🏆 **PET COSTUME CONTEST - October 31**

Registration is open NOW, and you have time to plan something truly unhinged. Hilarious outfits, terrifyingly cute monsters, dignified autumn attire - all welcome.

📝 Register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfEOfQ1q0_FUWq9Jg3DTmkLebvyVbR8xaMVIQvr2zWLbPNHMg/viewform

🍬 **FAMILY TRICK-OR-TREATING - October 31, 3–6 pm**

At participating downtown businesses.

ℹ️ Full details: https://www.experienceolympia.com/events/loveoly-downtown-for-halloween-pet-costume-contest/

---

**🐱 And mark your calendar for us.**

Oly Camp Kitties will be tabling on **October 31 from about 3:30–5:30 pm**, on Washington Street outside the Washington Center and Lolli Llama Candy Store - right by the costume contest stage.

Come say hi. We will have volunteers, we will have opinions about spay/neuter, and we will be absolutely delighted to see your pet in a costume.

---

Also, fair warning: our youngest has registered her miniature pony, **Dorito**.

You have nearly three weeks to prepare yourselves. Use them wisely. 🐴

Who are you bringing? 👇

💬 “I would rather struggle on my own than trust the system - it keeps us homeless.”That’s Natalia, speaking to The Jolt ...
10/12/2026

💬 “I would rather struggle on my own than trust the system - it keeps us homeless.”

That’s Natalia, speaking to The Jolt from inside her dwelling in The Jungle.

The Jolt spent three hours walking the site this pastweek, talking to about a dozen people about the city’s closure plan. Most expressed skepticism. One man told them to get away from him. Another said: “They need to listen to hear us; don’t listen to just respond.”

📰 Read it here: https://www.thejoltnews.com/stories/hold-timing-housing-and-the-jungle,32297

But Natalia’s line is the one I keep turning over, because I hear some version of it constantly.

And sometimes I say a version of it myself.

THE HOMELESS INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

That’s the term that gets used. You’ve probably heard it.

It comes from two completely different directions, which is part of what makes it confusing.

From one side: nonprofits and agencies have a financial interest in homelessness continuing. Solve it and the funding goes away. Look at the money spent and the problem getting worse. Where did all that money go?

From the other side, including from people living outside: the system is built around the convenience of funders and providers rather than being built around the people it serves. There are endless assessments that lead nowhere. Case management that manages but doesn't actually seem to help. Clients being made to prove their worthiness again and again to a new person each time.

Natalia’s version isn’t really either of those. Hers is experiential. It holds you back.

WHAT’S TRUE IN THE CRITIQUE

The assessment-to-outcome gap is real. Earlier this year, well over a hundred people in The Jungle had completed vulnerability assessments. A small numer had been housed. Think about what that means from the client’s side: you told a stranger the worst things that ever happened to you, in detail, and then nothing happened.

Do that twice and you stop believing it means anything.

The proof burden is enormous. We’ve written about this with SNAP and Medicaid - 80 hours a month, documented, twice-yearly renewals. Most people who lose benefits under those rules didn’t fail to work. They failed to do paperwork. The same pattern runs through housing.

Programs get built around what’s fundable. Not around what people NEED.

And accountability is truly thin in places. We’ve said this publicly. Several Lacey council members asked for real outcome documentation before approving Franz Anderson money, and they were right to. Activity reports are not outcomes.

WHAT’S NOT TRUE

But I can’t go where the stronger version of this argument goes.

Nobody is getting rich. The people I work alongside - outreach workers, case managers, shelter staff - are underpaid, overloaded, and leaving the field in significant numbers. If this is a racket, it is the worst-compensated racket I have ever seen.

The money isn’t disappearing. There isn’t enough of it. The city’s own communications director said it in this article: “there isn’t enough shelter and housing available across the region.” That is the bottleneck. Not waste... capacity.

And providers don’t control the inputs. No nonprofit in Thurston County sets wages, zoning, housing supply, or healthcare access. They’re catching people at the bottom of a system that keeps producing them.

HERE’S THE DISTINCTION I’D MAKE

A system that fails people is not the same as a system designed to fail them.

Our system fails constantly. It is slow, fragmented, paperwork-heavy, and built in a way that asks the most of the people with the least capacity to give it.

That’s real. Natalia isn’t wrong about her experience.

But the explanation isn’t conspiracy. It’s underfunding, fragmentation across agencies that don’t talk to each other, rules written by people who’ve never been unhoused, and a scale of need that outpaces capacity by an order of magnitude.

Which matters, because the two diagnoses require opposite treatments.

If the system is corrupt, the answer is to defund it. If the system is overwhelmed and badly designed, the answer is to fund it properly and redesign it.

I believe the second one. And I think the first one, however satisfying, mostly just gives people permission to stop caring.

BUT HERE’S THE PART I WON’T ARGUE WITH

When someone says the system keeps us homeless, the correct response is not to explain why they’re mistaken.

They are telling you what their experience feels like. That is information we should want.

Because the practical effect is identical either way. A person who has lost faith in the system stops engaging with it. They stop showing up for assessments. They stop answering calls. They disappear from the list.

And then they get counted as someone who refused help.

We wrote about that recently - the reasons people decline housing. This is one of them, and it may be the biggest. Not unwillingness. Exhaustion with a process that has already disappointed them.

SO WHAT DO WE DO WITH THIS

Oly Camp Kitties is built the way it is because we took this critique seriously.

No proof of income. No proof of address. No appointment anyone has to remember unaided. No sobriety requirement. No intake form before a relationship. If someone can’t get their cat to us, we go get the cat.

We did that because every one of those barriers is a place where a person falls out of a system. We’d rather absorb the difficulty ourselves than hand it to someone who’s already carrying enough.

That’s one small organization doing one narrow thing. We’re not housing anybody. But it’s the model, and the model is repeatable.

Listen. Listening is so important.

The people in The Jungle have been telling us how this feels for years. We should probably believe them. 🐾

Timing is everything, especially when it comes to finding housing for homeless individuals living in "The ...

🇮🇹 Buongiorno from Italy, friends!I am in Rome, Florence, and Tuscany for a bit. And before you ask, yes, obviously I am...
10/12/2026

🇮🇹 Buongiorno from Italy, friends!

I am in Rome, Florence, and Tuscany for a bit. And before you ask, yes, obviously I am looking at the cats. I have been looking at the cats since the moment I landed on Saturday!!!!

And I have to tell you about something that stopped me in my tracks.

ITALY LEGISLATED WHAT WE HAVE BEEN BEGGING FOR

In 1991, the Italian Parliament passed Law 281, often called the no-kill law. It applies nationally, and here is what it says:

🐾 Free-roaming cats have the recognized right to live free
🐾 It is illegal to remove or relocate a cat from the place it has chosen as home
🐾 Cats have a right to be fed where they live
🐾 Harming a cat is a crime, prosecutable under the law
🐾 Euthanasia is permitted only for cats who are gravely ill or suffering incurably

And then the part I literally had to read three times:

Sterilization is compulsory and provided free by the local public health authority.

Not a voluntary license plate at the DMV like we have in Washington State. Not a patchwork of exhausted nonprofits passing the hat. No. A national statutory obligation, publicly funded, carried out by the veterinary services of the local health unit.

Italy decided in 1991 that spay and neuter is a public responsibility.

WHAT?!?!?!?

Italy put this in the law thirty-five years ago.

AND THE CAT LADIES ARE A LEGAL INSTITUTION

This is my favorite part.

In Rome, a cat colony is a registered legal entity. Any group of two or more cats habitually living in a place they have chosen can be formally registered.

And the person who looks after that colony - who feeds them, watches their health, coordinates their care - is recognized in the law.

She is called a gattara. The cat lady.

Rome has had something like five thousand registered colonies. The actress Anna Magnani, who won an Academy Award, was a famous gattara.

Somewhere in Italy there is a woman doing exactly what our Camp Kitty Ladies do in The Jungle - and she has legal standing, public veterinary support, and a word for what she is.

I thought about our folks a lot when I read that.

ONE MORE THING, AND IT’S THE BEST ONE

The old Italian word for these cats was randagi - strays.

The modern term is gatti liberi.

Free cats.

They changed the word. And changing the word changed what the cats were.

You all know how I feel about language. 🧡

WHERE THE CATS ARE

If you ever find yourself in Rome, go to the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary. It sits in the sunken ruins at Largo di Torre Argentina, which happens to be the exact spot where Julius Caesar was assassinated.

Volunteer-run. Free to visit. Cats napping on two-thousand-year-old temple stones.

There is also a colony at the Pyramid of Cestius, next to the cemetery where Keats and Shelley are buried, and another at the Verano monumental cemetery, where cats wander among the tombstones.

And honestly, you see them all over the place. Near the Colosseum. At the Baths of Caracalla. Around the Spanish Steps. Sprawled in the sunshine.

BUT THERE IS MORE

Because I cannot help myself.

Researchers surveyed Roman colonies covering the 1991 to 2000 sterilization campaign. They found a decrease in total cat numbers of 16 to 32 percent - real progress, but as they noted, not as great as expected.

Which connects directly to what we wrote about recently. Getting population decline requires reaching roughly 70 percent sterilization in contiguous territory, sustained.

So Italy built the legal framework, funded it publicly, and protected the caretakers - and still did not automatically hit saturation.

The law gets you the system. It does not get you the coverage. You still have to do the work, cat by cat, year after year.

Which, I have to admit, was weirdly comforting to learn while standing six thousand miles from home.

Anyway. I will be back soon. The Camp Kitties are in excellent hands, as always.

And I am going to go find more cats. 🐾🇮🇹

- Whitney, Oly Camp Kitties

🐛 WE HAVE A FLEA PROBLEM. LET US TELL YOU ABOUT IT.One of the housing sites we serve has been dealing with fleas. Not a ...
10/11/2026

🐛 WE HAVE A FLEA PROBLEM. LET US TELL YOU ABOUT IT.

One of the housing sites we serve has been dealing with fleas. Not a flare-up, but a persistent, ongoing, nobody-can-shake-it flea situation.

We are working with the site on a real plan to end it. And we need help paying for our piece of it.

WHY FLEAS ARE SO HARD TO BEAT

Here is the thing:

Only about 5 percent of a flea infestation is the adult fleas you can see on the animal. The other 95 percent is eggs, larvae, and pupae, living in in the carpet, in the bedding, in the cracks of the floor.

And pupae are the real problem. They sit in a protective cocoon that insecticides do not pe*****te well, and they can stay dormant for months waiting for warmth and vibration to tell them a host is nearby.

So you can do a thorough professional cleaning, feel great about it, and two weeks later the pupae hatch and you are right back where you started.

WHAT ACTUALLY BREAKS THE CYCLE

Treating every animal, at the same time, continuously, for several months.

Modern flea preventives kill adult fleas before they can lay eggs. If every cat at a site is treated simultaneously and stays treated, newly hatched fleas jump onto a treated cat and die before reproducing. The environmental population empties out on its own.

But it only works if it is everyone, all at once. One untreated cat in one unit reseeds the whole building, because fleas travel through walls, hallways, and on people's clothing.

Treating most of the cats gets you almost nowhere. You have to get all of them.

SO HERE IS THE PLAN

🐱 Our part: get every cat at the site on a monthly flea treatment schedule and keep them on it.

🏠 The site's part: they are working with pest control on the building, and with residents on keeping their spaces clean. They have been great partners on this.

Everyone doing their piece at the same time is the only version of this that works.

NOW THE MATH, AND THE ASK

We use selamectin - essentially generic Revolution. It is a monthly topical that treats fleas, ear mites, ticks, hookworms, and roundworms all at once. Good product, broad coverage, easy to apply.

It costs us just shy of $7 per cat per month.

There are about 60 cats at this site.

That is roughly $420 a month, and this needs to run for several consecutive months to actually break the cycle.

We do not have a line item for that. We buy all our medication ourselves, out of donations. A lot of food gets donated and we are endlessly grateful for it, but flea treatment, dewormer, anti-fungal cream, antibiotics - we purchase every bit of that.

$7 treats one cat for a month.
$70 treats ten cats.
$420 treats the whole site for a month.

💰 olycampkitties.com/donate
💸 Venmo

WHY THIS MATTERS MORE THAN IT SOUNDS

Fleas are not a cosmetic problem.

Heavy infestations cause anemia in kittens, which can be fatal. They transmit tapeworm. They cause miserable skin disease in adult cats. And they bite people too - including residents who are already dealing with a lot.

This is also exactly the kind of unglamorous, repetitive, deeply boring work that nobody wants to fund and that genuinely changes lives. No ribbon cutting. Just sixty cats, every month, until it is done. 🐾

🕯️ WE ARE TABLING AT CANDLELIGHT IN THE WOODS!Come find Oly Camp Kitties at an evening we are super excited about.📅 Satu...
10/09/2026

🕯️ WE ARE TABLING AT CANDLELIGHT IN THE WOODS!

Come find Oly Camp Kitties at an evening we are super excited about.

📅 Saturday, October 17
⏰ 5:00 – 8:00 pm
📍 Healing Hearts Ranch, 3500 85th Ln SW, Olympia

Presented by HeartStrides Therapeutic Horsemanship in partnership with the Breezy Heart Foundation.

WHAT THE EVENING IS

A family-friendly night of candlelight, warmth, and community - raising funds for women rebuilding their lives after incarceration.

Here is what's happening:

🏮 Make a lantern and take it home
🌲 A candlelit walk through the woods
🍲 Chili and cornbread
☕ Hot chocolate and warm drinks
🎶 Music and games
🎃 Table-to-table trick-or-treating
🎟️ Silent auction and raffle

Tickets: Adults 18+ $30 · Youth 13–17 $20 · Kids 12 and under FREE
Entry, the lantern activity, and food are all included.

🎫 breezyheartfoundation.org/CandlelightWalkintheWoods

AND YES!!!WE ARE BRINGING THE KITTY STUFF!!! 🐾

Come say hi at our table! We will be handing out lots of fun cat things, plus information about what we do and how to get involved.

Bring the kids. Bring your walking shoes. Bring an appetite for chili.

WHY THIS ONE MATTERS TO US

We work at the intersection of animal welfare and human services, and this event sits right in that same space.

Supporting women coming home from incarceration is exactly the kind of work we recognize - meeting people at a hard moment, without judgment, and helping them build something.

Also, we just really like these folks. 🧡

See you in the woods on the 17th. 🕯️🐾

📧 Questions about the event: [email protected]

🍄 LET'S TALK ABOUT RINGWORM (AGAIN)On this week's run up to the Feral Cat Spay & Neuter Project in Lynnwood, we had thre...
10/09/2026

🍄 LET'S TALK ABOUT RINGWORM (AGAIN)

On this week's run up to the Feral Cat Spay & Neuter Project in Lynnwood, we had three kitties with suspected ringworm.

ACK!

Thankfully, Feral Cat is the bomb dot com. They still carefully serviced all three, and let us know what they were seeing so we could follow up. That is exactly the kind of partner you want. They are awesome and WE LOVE THEM!!!

Now our job is to work with the clients on resolving it.

FIRST - RINGWORM IS NOT A WORM

Despite the name, there is no worm involved. Ringworm is a fungal infection of the skin, hair, and occasionally the nails. The medical name is dermatophytosis, and the species we see most in cats is Microsporum canis.

It spreads mostly by direct contact with an infected animal, but also through spores, which are remarkably tough and can survive on bedding, towels, grooming tools, and clothing.

The incubation period runs anywhere from four days to four weeks. So a cat can be carrying it well before anything shows up.

The classic sign is a circular patch of hair loss with some scaling, usually on the face, ears, feet, or tail. But it can look like a lot of other things, and plenty of other things look like it. You cannot diagnose ringworm by eye alone. We say "suspected" for a reason.

WHY OUR CATS ARE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE

Published risk factors for ringworm include:

🔹 Being under a year old, or geriatric
🔹 Physiological stress
🔹 Malnutrition
🔹 Pregnancy or nursing
🔹 Living in high-density settings
🔹 Anything that compromises grooming or skin integrity - fleas, over-grooming, respiratory infection

Read that list again and think about a cat living in an encampment.

Young. Stressed. Often underfed. Often pregnant or nursing. Living close to a lot of other cats. Frequently dealing with fleas.

That is not bad luck. That is a list of conditions our clients' cats are living in every day.

One reassuring note: being FIV or FeLV positive does not increase ringworm risk. That is good news when you are dealing with outdoor kitties.

THE GOOD NEWS: THIS IS NOT AN EMERGENCY

Ringworm gets treated like a catastrophe and it really isn't one.

In most cases, animals spontaneously recover from ringworm within about three months. That is straight from the University of Wisconsin Shelter Medicine guidebook. Awaiting self-cure is a reasonable choice in some household situations.

Shelters treat aggressively because they need fast resolution and minimal environmental contamination. A cat living with their person in a tent is a different situation with a different calculation.

So nobody needs to panic. Nobody needs to surrender a cat over this. Nobody needs to euthanize a cat over this, ever!!!

TREATMENT OPTIONS

ORAL MEDICATION. Itraconazole is the treatment of choice. Terbinafine works similarly well. These require a veterinarian.

If a client wants to go this route, we refer them to Concern for Animals for a vet voucher, and we always recommend The Kitty Klinic - they are affordable, they are wonderful, and they are the local vet we use for OCK. For urgent situations we use Capital Pet Urgent Care. Both are locally owned, which we love.

One important note for anyone pursuing this: compounded itraconazole is not recommended. It has repeatedly been shown to be less effective and can lead to treatment failure. Ask for a generic or the brand-name liquid.

LIME SULFUR - AND WE CAN PROVIDE THIS. 🧡

This is the most effective topical treatment available, and it is something we can get directly into a client's hands.

Despite being called a "dip," you do not dip the cat. Physically dipping cats is not recommended, it is stressful and it spreads spores between animals.

Instead:

✅ Mix 8 ounces per gallon of warm water. Note: this is twice the concentration on the bottle.
✅ Do not pre-wet the cat
✅ Sponge or spray it on, making sure the coat and skin are fully saturated
✅ Use a small rag for the face, nose, and ears
✅ Do not rinse it off
✅ Wrap in a towel and let the cat dry somewhere warm
✅ Repeat twice weekly, spacing applications three to four days apart

It is safe for pregnant and nursing cats, and for kittens over two to three weeks old.

Fair warning: it smells terrible (sulfur! eww!) and it will stain things. Come prepared.

HOW YOU KNOW IT IS WORKING

A Wood's lamp - a UV light at a specific wavelength - makes a metabolite of M. canis glow bright green along the hair shaft.

Here is the useful part for tracking progress: as a cat heals, the new hair growing out of the follicle is normal and does not fluoresce. So over time you see hairs that glow only at the tips.

That is what recovery looks like under the light.

IMPORTANT THING TO KNOW: PEOPLE CAN GET IT TOO!

Ringworm is zoonotic - that means it is transmissible between animal and human. It usually shows up as a round, scaly, sometimes itchy patch on the skin, and it is treatable with over-the-counter antifungal cream from any pharmacy.

Wash your hands after handling an affected cat. If you develop a suspicious patch, see a doctor. It is not dangerous, just annoying.

SO - THREE KITTIES, THREE CONVERSATIONS

That is where we are. We will talk with each client about what they want to do, provide lime sulfur to whoever wants it, and connect anyone who wants oral meds to a voucher and an appointment.

No judgment, no pressure, no panic. Just information and options, same as always. 🐾

📖 Source: Ringworm guidebook, Shelter Medicine Programs at the University of Wisconsin and UC Davis, updated February 2026.

Feral Cat Spay/Neuter Project

Our friends at Interfaith Works Homeless Services Program have a couple of great jobs open right now!
10/09/2026

Our friends at Interfaith Works Homeless Services Program have a couple of great jobs open right now!

Come Work with Us—Interfaith Works is a great place to work! We are a flexible, supportive, and employee-centered organization. We show up, work really hard, and we do our best to always encourage each other’s healthy work-life balance and self-preservation practices.

Address

Olympia, WA

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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