I brought a cat and her 5 kittens home from the shelter last summer.
Her owner had given her up because she "had mites."  The cat and her
kittens were covered with fleas, so we at the shelter assumed she didn't
know the difference between mites and fleas, so we bathed everyone and
thought that was the end of it.  The kittens have long since been
adopted, but nobody ever adopted the mother so I've still got her.
Starting in December, I noticed she had sores all around her neck.  They
felt like warts and when I looked at them, they were scabs.  She didn't
seem to be itchy though.  I took her to the vet and he did a culture for
fungus, which was negative, he combed her looking for fleas, there were
none, but I treated her with Advantage anyhow, and he put tape on her
hair and pulled it off and looked at the tape under his microscope
looking for mites and didn't find any.  He decided it was an allergy to
either food, or something in my house.  Well next thing I knew, a few of
my other cats had similar sores on their necks and backs.  Obviously a
bunch of cats wouldn't suddenly become allergic to something all at the
same time, so I took the original cat to a vetrinary skin specialist and
she did the Wood's lamp test looking for ringworm, it was negative,
looked for fleas, mites, did a skin scraping for fungus, etc... and
charged nearly 300 dollars to tell me there was nothing wrong with the
cat.  But then another cat got a sore on his neck so I tried a 3rd vet,
told her everything, and she found nothing.  But now someone has just
called me telling me a cat she got from me who I fostered here back in
January has 2 scabs on her, one on her neck and I forget where the other
one is.  What could this be?????  What can I do?  I feel like I'm
running a leper colony, and I obviously can't foster any more cats or
kittens until I solve this mystery.  I work at the animal shelter so
it's going to break my heart not to be able to bring any more home and
save them.  Has anyone got any ideas??  Thanks so much,

Laurie