Kitty help sought! Information please!

[amedia]

Just found that our rambunctious kitten managed to step in a puddle of half-congealed candlewax. He isn't burned, but his paw is caked with the stuff and he's not having a lot of success licking it off. We tried using a stiff brush and got a lot of the bits and pieces off, but the main area is still pretty solid. We tried soaking his paw in warm water to loosen it, but couldn't keep his paw in the water for more than a few seconds.

Is it safe to let him keep licking at it, or will it make him sick?

Is there any other way to get it off? If it was on any other surface, we'd use ice and peel it, but we don't want to try to hold an ice cube to his paw, for obvious reasons.

I am frantically searching the Internet trying to find help on this topic - so far not much (one promising discussion turned into a tiff on the wisdom of leaving electric tart warmers burning).

Comments

[elke-tanzer.livejournal.com]

Dunno... it probably depends on whether the candle was plain beeswax or something more synthetic and/or scented and/or colored.

The reason I suggested cold water rather than warm... getting wax out of fabric is (as you probably know) best done with cold water or ice, and then flaking or peeling the wax off. You probably won't be able to get the wax warm enough to let it drip off, so the other extreme sounded more feasible to me.

Kids eat crayons all the time. It's not really that different, right, except for the scale (kitties being much smaller than children, and therefore the wax being bigger comparatively)?

[amedia.livejournal.com]

It's not really that different, right, except for the scale (kitties being much smaller than children, and therefore the wax being bigger comparatively)?

Makes sense to me!

The cold water makes sense, too. I did read somewhere (I've been to a lot of vet advice pages in the last fifteen minutes) that one shouldn't put ice directly on a kitty (e.g., a kitty with a sprain or other injury should have an ice bag wrapped in a towel, not applied directly), so cold water would be the next best thing. He's already pretty mad about the brushing and the warm water, though, so we may just leave him be for now.