June to October. What’s been going on? A whirlwind of dealing with (so far) a total of THIRTEEN animals dumped in our area; nine kittens and one cat (mother of four of the kittens), two giant lab-mix puppies and one half-grown smallish hound girl. This kind of “garbage” (after all, whoever is dumping them clearly sees them that way) comes with its own never-ending demands, expenses, and—hazards.
The hazards most relevant to our quest for zero garbage came with the set of four kittens who were dumped with their mother. Their mother turned out to have FIV (the feline equivalent of HIV; for which there is no effective vaccine and no cure; just one of many reasons why indoor cats are happier, healthier, and live 10-15 years longer than their outdoor counterparts), and she was in such rough shape that her kittens were suffering from multiple opportunistic diseases, too (didn’t help that they were all starving, also). Blessedly, the kittens did NOT have FIV—however, they did have upper respiratory infections, fleas, mites, various intestinal worms, and most annoyingly, ringworm.
Ringworm, despite its name, is not a worm but a skin fungus. It is also, sadly, one of the handful of diseases that can be passed from pet to person (known as zoonotic diseases). Here’s where the garbage challenge comes in. To combat the ringworm on the kitties, what they most needed was a better diet and to have the rest of the challenges to their systems defeated, so they could fight it off themselves. Unfortunately, before the kittens learned when to use their claws and when not to, every time they scratched me even ever-so-lightly, that spot would be “inoculated” with the dadgum ringworm fungus—so (despite obsessive-compulsive washing after handling them) here I was breaking out with nasty itchy spots all over me. It didn’t help that, when the spots first come up, they look and feel just like an insect bite (like mosquito bites, for example, of which we have plenty in the summer), so for a while I kept thinking that is what they were—until they spread enough to start forming the dreaded rings!
The doctor diagnosed me with one glance (and, tellingly, no touching!). And here came a prescription for an antifungal cream AND an oral prescription of diflucan, since I had the stuff in so many places she thought it best to be treated systemically. So now there’s an aluminum tube full of antifungal cream, with its who-knows-what-kind-of-plastic cap, and a prescription bottle with NO recycling info on it—who makes these little orange prescription pill bottles with the “child-resistant” caps, anyway, and out of WHAT?
Two weeks later I’m back at the doctor; having awoken with gummy eyes, one of which felt like it was full of sand. This time she diagnoses me from ACROSS THE ROOM (I don’t really blame her). First ringworm, now conjunctivitis. I don’t know if the conjunctivitis is zoonotic or just stress-related, but I feel pretty chagrined—like I’m some kind of weird grown-up that collects childhood diseases as a hobby or something.
So NOW I have a tiny little plastic bottle of eye drops full of CIPRO. The bottle (of course) has no recycling info on it, and the remaining drops (of course they always give you more than you need) are certainly nothing that we want to just cast out into the environment, to breed nasty super-bacteria that will come back to haunt us like something out of “Resident Evil.”
I’ve looked up environmentally “friendly” recommendations for throwing away prescriptions, and they all go something like this: melt some candle wax and pour it into the bottle, sealing the remaining pills inside, wait for it to cool, then put the cap back on tightly and throw the whole thing away. Um, wait a minute—I GUESS that’s likely to help keep them out of the groundwater, but it means throwing even MORE trash in the landfill. How is this environmentally friendly? Plus, I doubt that’s going to work with my liquid eyedrops in their dropper container.
So now I’ve had these things sitting on my bathroom counter for months, wondering what on Earth can be done with them. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
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