PLS HELP! My cat got doused in kerosene ...

Yeah keosene stinks,  Perhaps a tomato bath?  kinda like the do for skunk.  but I am sure the web has some other hints for the smell.  I would also suggest lots of cool fresh water so she can drink all she wants.

P.S. no open flame. 

Thanks, guys. Three very thorough lotsa foam baby shampoo scrubbing baths later and she doesn't smell like kerosene anymore--now it's just us and my entire house.

Thank God she is such a good little cat (other than always being in trouble, but that's the whole Funny Farm Family as you know) ... not difficult at all to bathe her though she certainly voiced her displeasure.

Also very glad my friend Jim from LA is visiting. Could not have done all this on my own! Well, I would have, somehow, or called for reinforcements, but made things much easier, esp since I just had oral surgery yesterday and am supposed to really not be making any kind of exertion.

I would call a vet and ask if shaving her and washing her would be best.  That kerosene could be quite toxic to her skin and with all of her fur, you may want to make sure it's completely removed.  It make take shaving off all of her fur to get rid of the fur-soaked kerosene and make sure that her skin is completely clean.  She may look funny for a while, but the fur will grow back and it could be much better than her getting a serious illness or blood poisoning if it stays on her skin.

Call a vet.

Posted on your FB page, my dear.  I hope kit teh is okay.

Yanti - I know it sounds weird, but two things work very well to remove the smells out of my hair from work - that includes: diesel, gas, smoke, and other things I won't mention in a public forum. 

Lemon juice (but this depends on how the skin is.  If it is broken, DON'T USE LEMON JUICE!

And beer.  This is my favorite.  I take two bottles in the shower with me, one for me, and one for, uh, me, and wash the crud out of my hair with beer.  Then you wash it with regular shampoo.  By the time you're out of the shower, your clean, happy, and smell great.

Make sure you put conditioner in your hair afterward to help with the cuticle.

I imagine this will work well for cats, too.

If I wash my cat in beer, I'm going to have a very drunk cat and a very frantic dog as she is a total alcoholic and would be chasing the cat around, trying to slurp her.

All my animals are junkies. Go figure.

Those are great tips, though. Thanks! Finally, many hours later, the smell is out of most of us and the house, though quite a few things need to be washed.

Put her on your vibrating box, that should shake it off

I used to work in a rural area of VA bordering WV and we saw a fair amount of dogs/cats with petroleum products on them for the purpose of home remedies for every ailment you can imagine.  It sounds like you got it off so you've done what you can.  If for some reason you need to wash again (we stocked Dawn for this purpose), you should follow with your own hair conditioner soaking for a few minutes before rinsing since the soap is really stripping to their natural skin oils and they can look like the have psoriasis they get so red and flaky

A fair number of these animals have their fur completely fall out a few weeks later where the chemical was and then the hair grows back just fine without treatment.  Hopefully you got it off soon enough to not be an issue, but I thought I'd mention it since it would freak me out if I didn't know it was a possibility.  Also, rarely, the lungs get irritated from the fumes and they can have breathing problems starting 1-2 days later. 

Who knows what happened? Everyone here uses kerosene for many things; she may have knocked over a kerosene lamp, jumped into a kerosene puddle, yeah, someone may have dumped kerosene on her for kicks (unlikely) ...

But in any case, thank you all for your help, and Biscuits is doing great, having made a full recovery. I'll keep her indoors for another night just in case anything develops but she is very much back to herself. I'm not quite sure how to describe that, but suffice it to say nobody who knows her or me seemed at all surprised this happened.

Here's my friend from LA Jim comforting a wet, very clean, and only faintly fuel-smelling Biscuits (aka KeroKitty):

(024.JimBiscuitsWet (Small).jpg)

OMG, This is going in my sig line.

Sorry to hear.  I only have one suggestion, but I think you want your cat alive.