Topic: Mangey fox and cat question

[Squash64]

This fox was fast asleep on my neighbour's plot this morning. 

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When it realised I was there it got up and posed for this photo

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The poor thing's face looks as though it is covered in mange, its ears are really crusty. 

I know that dogs can get mange from foxes, but can cats?

[Robert_Brenchley]

It's nice to see they're around. I used to get them walking straight past me on the plot occasionally, but since the mange arrived, I've seen very few.

[Flighty]

Squash they can but the chances are very remote. This website is worth a look - http://www.thefoxwebsite.org/disease/diseasemange.html

Sadly I've seen very little of our resident allotment foxes this year!

[Squash64]

Squash they can but the chances are very remote. This website is worth a look - http://www.thefoxwebsite.org/disease/diseasemange.html

Sadly I've seen very little of our resident allotment foxes this year!

Thanks Flighty, you've put my mind at rest. 

The fox I saw today was badly affected by mange. I couldn't see it clearly until I enlarged the photos and it was all over his ears, face and back legs.

[Flighty]

Squash you're welcome!  I found a dead fox on the allotment site last year that had probably died from mange. It was a truly pitiful sight and it must have been in agony. It's something I wouldn't wish on any animal.

[Borlotti]

Do foxes play tennis, as I say two lovely fox cubs asleep on the tennis courts in the local park.  I saw them doing a lot of scratching, so perhaps they weren't that healthy.  Have seen a few on the allotments and they looked OK, but hid when they saw me, so couldn't get a photo. We have many uncultivated sites on our allotments so perhaps we are helping the wild life, ie bees, insects etc.

[Squash64]

A friend advised me to contact the RSPCA about the fox, which I did this afternoon. 
I spoke to a very nice lady and explained that as we have feral cats on the site it might be difficult to set a trap for the fox.  She told me she would make enquiries about how to catch it and would get back to me.

[gp.girl]

Last month my dad removed a dead fox from under a car in the drive. It had been hit by a car and seen to run into his front garden, unfortunately no-one told him and it died curled up in the only safe place it could get to. Poor thing must have been in agony.

I don't know if they can help your fox but if it was a pet they'd be prosecuting the owner so......

[teapig]

Hello

I would advise against contacting the RSPCA for wildlife. They can be a bit hit and miss and rather quick to euthanase.

Ideally, contact a specialist wildlife rescue - you'll find details of organisations across the UK here - www.helpwildlife.co.uk

The National Fox Welfare Society will provide you with a safe and effective remedy which can be added to food if you are willing to provide the fox with a little food each day for a couple of weeks.

[Toadspawn]

People feeding foxes in towns has been a major contribution to the increase on mange. Foxes have lost the need and the ability to hunt and the fox population has increased because they can breed and raise cubs more easily because of the reliability of food suplies. Rather than have a large territory over which they need to hunt foxes are living closer together and thus diseases can spread from animal to animal much more readily.
It is a pity town and city dwellers look upon the fox as a nice cuddly animal and feed it and treat it as a pet rather than the wild animal and hunter that it really is.
If only all urban foxes could be eliminated mange would no longer be a problem. If hunting returned to the countryside this would also help because huntimg removed the weak and old animals and the fox population remained healthy.

[Squash64]

Hello

I would advise against contacting the RSPCA for wildlife. They can be a bit hit and miss and rather quick to euthanase.

Ideally, contact a specialist wildlife rescue - you'll find details of organisations across the UK here - www.helpwildlife.co.uk

The National Fox Welfare Society will provide you with a safe and effective remedy which can be added to food if you are willing to provide the fox with a little food each day for a couple of weeks.

Thank you teapig and welcome  :)

I looked at the website and it is very helpful. 

I have emailed them for advice because I need to be sure that the treatment added to the food would not harm our feral cats.
 
I had no idea that there was such a thing as a welfare society for foxes, so thank you very much for that.

[Hyacinth]

Years ago,and possibly Robert will remember this, mange was at epidemic proportions here in B'ham and this was when the fox population got reduced. At this time we had a young fox visit our gardens. A neighbour saw the first signs of mange and she did all the research, phoning, etc. The RSPCA/PDSA didn't want to know. She found an organization (poss the one you've found?) who helped. The only remedy they could offer was a homeopathic one (and sadly, now, I don't remember the ingredients.) They supplied several small bottles of this for us neighbours to use, and it came along with a fact sheet. We all had cats at the time and were reassured that the risk to them of contracting it was negligible. Treatment was a few drops on, they suggested, a jam sandwich! They said that the fox would eat jam but cats didn't like it? WRONG!! One cat, Francesca, was particularly partial to them, we found......  The fox was still around and getting increasingly worse. The disease took over v. quickly and quite soon this prime little beast was completely hairless except for a small brush of hair at the end of its tail. The scratching was terrible to see. The organization supplied a trap & would, once it was caught, take the fox away and euthanise it - derisive snorts from a friend who farms in Wales who declared that foxes were much too canny to enter it - even for a poxy jam sandwich. And so it proved. Over the days we rescued a variety of birds - and Francesca. Many times. We don't know where the fox died, or when, but we hoped and imagined that death was soon. Francesca lived to a ripe old age and died of natural causes. An interesting fact I remember reading was that the normal life expectancy of urban foxes is little more than 2 years.Your poor little fox.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Two and a bit years is longer than rural foxes live. They have a pretty marginal existence, and many fail to survive an average winter, never mind one like the last.