Is there any help?

One of my cats , mutalets her own tail , this has been going for over 10 months now . She has had a paratial ampution after the first time this happend as she got an infection there. We have tried everything for feline hyperista including
prosac, perdnisone, amyitripltinle, colmicalm,phenibarbitol,nurntion, etc, nothing seems to work she has had to be living with a bandge on all this time she will not display the behiovr when the bandge is on but she is contaly trying to pull the bandge off.Thia workd fine as we were getting a month out of a banadge but now it isnt even lasting 2 days , im starting to think that something else is going on here ,
she has had many test and checked her skin and blood nothing . WE are trying to figure out if taking her to a neroligist is going to be a smart move? we have just about tapped out all of our money taking this cat to emerncey vets in the middle of the night after each time she gets this bandge off and attacks her tail , our other though is a full tail ampultion but our vet seems to think this will not stop her from attacking that area. i dont know she only attacks the very tip of the tail so i have never seen here attack her butt area , other than that he has pretty much told us that our only other option to the bandge or cat scans is to put her down , wich i dont know if i can do with out knowing what is wrong with this cat , i just feel in my heart that this is a pain issue beacuse when i watch her attack her tail its so brutal .

also if it was an ocd would she not do the same thing even with a bandge on?
after 10 months thousand of dollars and a half of dozen vets , we still have no idea what is going on or what to do , we just know we cant go on like this anymore.

i have seen another post just like this on this fourm that was left off at the cat getting a full ampultion but the person didnt post what happened after that , i emailed them to see with no answer does anyone know anything about it or what happened or does anyone here have any advice or something anything?


Im sorry for all the spelling a grammar mistakes but with no sllep last night im at witts end ,

Our reason for putting off the full tail amputaion is the vet has sated that once we do this if she still attacks her hind area we will have no option but to put her down. Is there a way for them to do the amp. with out leaving a stump? as it really seems that its the movment of the tail that sets her off , she is now been giving some blocks to the tail to see if this helps , problem is this with any thing we try how will we ever know if anything is working as this cat has to have a bandge on at all times , so all we really she is her going after the bange to try to remove it,

Other odd stuff this cat has alwaysdone is lay down and kick her back feet , she would mis judge jumps at times , and was always very high strung or very hyper .

I also wanted to add in the few times i have had to rebandge her at home i notice i can touch her tail with no issue unitl i get to the tip once i touch the tip he goes crazy this is why i belive it to be a pain issue , if any one is dealing with this we use a bandge called elesticgone wich has one side with adhive we wrap it and it stays on unless she really goes ta it.

Definitely take her to a neurologist as one last try because there are similar neurological syndromes in people. Tell him what you wrote about even touching the tip of her tail (and all the other history). Ask your vet for a referral and write back here after you've taken her.

Update: I went to see the ner. today a bit of good news in a sense .
I took all the records i had and a set of x rays that my normal vet had taken. What she found in the xray is that one of the bones near the back hips close to the tail seems to be misshapen or thin along with an imflamed colen wich has her thinking that my cat might be having some compression in this area and possibly cuasing her some pain. Before the vist we had stared her on 5mg prozc and and 5 mg of dexamethasone wich has made a hudge differnace in her she hasnt even really touched her bandge at all all week .

What i am seeing is that she seems to be responding to the pain meds in a good way wich might be a good sign . I WAS ALSO TOLD BY THE nerouligsit that what happens in these cases is usally that the cat has some sort of pain to start it then the behavior becomes in grained in to them , thats why they dont belive ampulting the whole tail is a good option right now , in a sense the 2 issues go hand and hand . She advised me to keep her on these 2 meds for a while and when she finally pulls this bandge off lets see how she acts if the same we can then go to get an mri to take a closer look at this bone and if compression is found here a simple surgey can fix it , to take away any pain that might be there . But we may have to break her somewhat of the acutal behivor of biting the tail , much like when a human gets a leg taken off sometimes they will belive they have pain there even after it is gone .

To sum it up right now i fell great that i went and in 20 minutes i got more than i have in 2 years of going to the normal vet who told me the x ray was perfaclty normal . ill post agian when i have more info or updates /

to anyone else dealing with this i advise u to get xrays and see a good specialist .

I dont have much to offer her but that im glad you have some answers. My dog also atacks her tail and when its realy bad we have to put on a collar. THat dont help much cause im scared for her to have it on when we are gone so she chews on it while we are gone or at night.

From all the reading i have done i might suggest for a dog it seems the most common reason is the anal sac have it checked for infection very simple at ur vet but dont rule out a pain issue at all . u might also want to try the prosac ask ur vet . other common issues for this for dogs seems to be food allery as well something u can try with out much cost . also i use a product called

elastikoin bandge wich is a adhive bande u can use its very hard for them to get it off and better than a clollar u can get it at any online medical supply store its made by johnson and johnson and it doesn seem to be bad on the hair .

April, I agree about checking the anal sacs and pursuing allergies as a possibility. My Golden Retriever has horrible allergies. He chews on one foot 90% of the time instead of a generalized area like you would expect.

They also make a soft padded collar that looks more like a cervical collar that you see on people. "Bite Not Collar" is one of the brands - not that I'm saying it is better than other ones, just the one I've seen around. It is supposed to prevent them from bending their neck. And they come in cat sizes also.

i have one its very good its like a cushion in the shape of a doughnut very flexible and soft works well.

Yeah vet was thinking allergies too and gave us a special shampoo. I didnt think of a food alergy though hmm.

It was worse when we got her she wasnt fixed and when she went into heat it was awfull she wouldnt have much hair left on her tail she looked rather funny since she is a shihtzsu.

We have gotten her fixed as we didnt ever plan on her having puppies. It has helped some but she still has bouts of pulling out her tail hair.

She does have some dietary problems since so far the only thing we have found that doesnt give her mucusy diahreha (sp) is science diet canned (shes also picky).
Wow feel like ive robbed this thread. How is it going with your cat?

So far so good . She does still have a bandge on but she hasnt messed with it wich im guessing is beacuse now that she has pain meds it must not be bothering her to much. We are going to get the mri soon as our pet insurance will cover almost $500 of it . Good thing to note with your dog my sister s dog used to get sezures once they changed his dog food they stopped completey . There is also a liquid bandge u can try wich dogs dont like the taste of u put it on let it dry and i think its good for a few days .

If you do some searching on the net u will find good info for your dog as when i was doing so for my cat i found tons of stuff on dogs chewing there tails . my cat doesnt chew the tail she really attacks it to the point of i think she would take it off it no one was home . Thankfully we have been home everytime this has happened . Im am more that happy right now though as this is really the only time i have seen any change in her , at all.

But i have to say im also a bit mad to , as i always belived this animal was in pain i could just see it by how she would get so viloent agisnt the tail . Each vet that i went to kind of dismissed this idea and it wasnt until i changed to my 4th vet that an xray was taken wich i think should have been done right off the bat , it just makes sense to me that u start with seeing if something is wrong or pain no? To just dismiss this as some ocd always bugged me , i dont really know if i even belive an ainmal can have ocd i mean thats a human thing , and i kind of feel like this : to me a cat doing what she is doing can only be for a reason . It seems that some peole want to put human condtions on animals , ive been around animals my whole life and i just strongly feel that cats dont do this for no reason , i think in all these cases there has to be something there , for a cat to go from normal one day to trying to rip her tail off the next something must be there .

The thing i found most intresting was now if i look at that xray i can see clear as day how the 2 bones are very differantly shaped , i put that toghter with some of her other werid stuff and it makes sense . I dont wanna get my hopes up , but at least i have something i can point to and say that could be why! it at least offers me something where is before i had nothing but ur cat is crazy . It just makes the whole ordel eaiser to handle , now i can say when she is acting up ok she might be having some pain in stead of i dont know what is wrong you know? As little as that is i now have something to work with here.

If your dog is having that type of dyarrea i would make sure to have that checked out , well.

you can try a brand called royal cainie i think they sell it at most vets they have a hypoalergic food that i feed to one of my cats wich is great for allgery problems , they have it for dogs to i belive . its dry food but my cats from day one loved it they warned me at the vet that this food drives cats and dogs crazy lol!