A Natural Remedy for Ringworm – Coconut Oil

One day I noticed our cat Louie licking his belly. This didn’t seem to be a typical grooming session, he had been licking the same spot for far too long. So I approached him and parted the fur where he’d been licking.

There was a bare spot on his belly where there was no fur, and on that spot the skin was inflamed and red.

I asked Chad to come have a look, and his first response was, “I think that’s ringworm.” He was right – at closer inspection, the redness seemed to be in a ring shape.

Immediately, thoughts of a vet visit in the height of the COVID pandemic swirled into my head. Living in a community that was at the time, strongly anti-mask, I felt a sense of dread.

I decided to look at some forums to see if there were any good natural home remedies for ringworm on cats. The consensus was that coconut oil worked well for this.

Ringworm, in case you didn’t know, is not actually a worm. It’s a fungus. Coconut oil has anti-fungal properties, which is why this remedy was supposed to work.

It seemed to me that coconut oil was worth a try! I had some in the cupboard, and it was certainly worth avoiding the logistics (and extra expense) of a visit to the vet.

With eight cats and two dogs, we have to make sure a vet consultation is truly warranted. And since the animals don’t really enjoy going to the vet anyway, that’s even more motivation to find a natural DIY remedy.

So we started Louie’s natural ringworm treatment. I had Chad hold him while I applied about an eight of a teaspoon of coconut oil to the inflamed area.

During the first application, Louie squirmed a bit, wondering what the heck we were doing to him. But as soon as we put him down and he was free to lick a bit of the oil off of his belly, he was a happy cat, enjoying the taste of the coconut oil.

We continued this treatment twice a day for the next three or four days, Louie enjoying his “treat” each time.

After a couple of days his skin looked less inflamed. Within a week – the redness had almost completed disappeared. Soon Louie’s fur grew back, and you would never know he’d had ringworm.

A week after treating Louie’s ringworm with coconut oil.

A few months later we had the opportunity to try this treatment again on one of our other cats, Bobo. We followed the same procedure, just a few days of applying coconut oil to the ringworm, and quickly the problem disappeared.

I was extremely impressed at seeing how efficient this treatment was in not just one, but two of our cats.