Monday, January 28, 2013

Outside The Delivery System, Hartz's UltraGuard Ear Mite Treatment For Cats Works!


The Good: Effective at killing ear mites, Inexpensive, Does not irritate cat’s skin!
The Bad: Very hard to apply usefully.
The Basics: Gollum hates having medicine put in his ears about as much as he hates ear mites, so applying Hartz Ultra Guard Ear Mite Treatment For Cats is very difficult.


For all of the years that I had both Brillo and Gollum, I cleaned their ears with ear swabs about once a month. For one reason or another, utterly beyond my ken, Gollum has started getting ear mites (recognizable from the thick, black waxy build-up in his ears) far more regularly since we moved to Michigan. He is an indoor only cat, yet since moving at the end of August, I have seen him rubbing his ears far more often and his ears have gotten clogged much faster (which, at its most extreme, makes him howl and throws off his balance). So, my wife picked up some Hartz Ultra Guard Ear Mite Treatment For Cats for Gollum.

Hartz Ultra Guard Ear Mite Treatment For Cats is a great, inexpensive medicine for cats. Instead of simply removing the waxy build-up, which is the effect of the ear mites, Hartz Ultra Guard Ear Mite Treatment For Cats kills the ear mites and prevents the cat from reacting to the ear mites. Hartz provides three .101 fluid ounce tubes of ear mite treatment. Each treatment is supposed to have 100 drops and for Gollum’s weight, he is supposed to get 5 – 10 drops per day, per ear. That gets Gollum a one week regimen of ear mite treatments.

And it works.

Within a week, Gollum’s ears are mite free and he no longer has thick, dark wax building up in his ears!

Unfortunately, the treatment itself is very hard to use to get the results one wants and get the value out of the product. Dripping the drops into the ear canal wakes Gollum up (when he is asleep and I begin applying the medicine) almost instantly. He then shakes his head vigorously to get the fluid out of his ears. This usually wastes at least two drops worth of medicine. And, while the directions recommend one massage the medicine into the ears (which I do), usually Gollum shakes his head before I can massage the medicine in (I only have so many hands!). Moreover, Gollum flattens down his ears to try to prevent me from applying the medicine in the other ear. By day three of treatment, Gollum is skittish around me and runs from me when I try to apply it.

Hartz has a good, effective product and while I usually rail against the lack of environmentalism of disposable products, the company might do better to create something like an ear swab that is drenched in the treatment to improve the delivery of this medicine. While that might “waste” ear swabs, less medicine would be wasted and it could be delivered much more directly, without scaring cats as much!

Still, it is hard to argue with the way Hartz Ultra Guard Ear Mite Treatment For Cats actually kills ear mites without irritating the skin of cats’ ears.

For other cat care products, please visit my reviews of:
Hartz Crunch ‘N Clean Fish & Farm cat treats
SmartyKat Catnip Mist Catnip-Infused Spray
Sergeant's Coconut Berry Flea & Tick Shampoo For Cats

8/10

For other cat product reviews, please check out my Cat Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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