Help! Why is the happening to my cat!!!!????

Hey guys- Bella is my two year old cat.. She's normally healthy as can be. Lately she's been scratching the living daylights out of her neck and back. She is an INDOOR CAT.. Never ever goes outside and we have no other animals. I am taking her to the vet this afternoon but wanted to post here anyways to see if anyone else has seen anything like this on a cat before and maybe someone else is experiencing this and this post could help them out too. Thanks!

That looks exactly like my cat gets when he gets an attack of seasonal allergy.  It seems to be a combination of pollens, maybe fleas, mosquitoes, other bugs, all things that he can handle normally but in Spring and Fall he starts getting flakes and then they peel and he looks like tht and scratches.  My vet diagnosed "allergy of unknown cause" the first time (he had no fleas) and gave him a shot of depo-medrol, a long acting steroid to calm the allergic reaction.  Within a few days he was no longer scratching and all the scabby areas healed up.  He didnt need another shot for an entire year, and suddenly the next fall it started again so I took him in.  I had not even noticed the timing, but the vet looked at the chart and said "You were in exactly a year ago with this same cat.  I think he has SEASONAL allergy.  He gave him another shot of depo-medrol and he was good to go again.  This spring is the first time he's threatened to get it in the spring.  I've been giving him a cat dose of citrizine (generic Zyrtec) which someone on here recommended and so far it's working.  He had started to get scabs over his eyes but they have healed.  Spring is just about past here in Georgia, so I'm hoping that will be enough to tide him through until fall when it will probably strike again.  Yours is bad enough that I would go to the vet right away.  Itching is miserable, and if he keeps scratching himself he can cause an infection.  Feel free to mention the seasonal allergy possibility.

Agree! This looks very similar to some of our rescues that have flea allergies. One single bite from a flea can trigger this severe of a reaction.

My Max also has dermatitis due to severe food allergies. Beef and Rabbit are his triggers. If he eats any his ears look like they have second degree burns.

Let us know what you find out at the vet! My guess is they'll give her a steroid injection of some kind, as well as an antibiotic to help prevent/treat a skin infection.

Though there is some controversy witv its use, Convenia (an injectable antibiotic) is very good at treat skin conditions.

Do not leap into the use of Convenia!  It stays in the system for 65 days.  If your animal is allergic to it, there is no way to get it out.  It has its uses, i.e. with skin INFECTIONS (not allergies) and with feral cats that will not be around to medicate, but if you have an animal you can handle and give a pill to, there are other safer drugs to use  Google it before ever allowing it to be injected in your animal.

BTW the only other time I've seen that kind of skin reaction in that area was from the use of a very toxic topical wormer.  If you did apply anything topical to the skin, then thats another thing to be considered.

Hey guys thanks for your advice! So I took her to the vet... They did a "tape test" and concluded that it's a bacterial skin infection. They didn't identify a cause... I feed her blue buffalo limited ingredient chicken recipe, she's not on any meds, didn't have any fleas or ticks, and nothing else that raised any alarm. So they said it really could have been anything. She did give her a steroid injection for the itch and antibiotics for the bacteria. My question now is- how long is it going to take for that steroid injection to become effective in taking her itch away? She's stil scratching.....

It varies from cat to cat and also depends on what dose of steroid she received (as well as what kind of steroid...usually Depo). But, most of my cats have shown significant improvement in a matter of 1-2 days.

The important thing now is for her skin to heal and the infection not to get any worse. We used a medicated spray on one of our rescues that had a similar issue (she looked like she had 2nd and 3rd degree burns...it was horrible!) and she healed up exceptionally well.

I'll have to find out the name of the spray. But I HIGHLY recommend it!

The spray I recommend is BANIXX, I got it at Tractor Supply but you can get it online too.  I've used it on MYSELF as well as on the cats.  No odor, no sting, no residue, but it stops itching, at least on me, and seems to prevent infection.

https://jet.com/product/detail/8983...GFLFLY8I5FF9W3qOiFfUMaAgmv8P8HAQ&gclsrc=aw.ds

Thanks everyone! She seems to have stopped scratching the area so I think either the steroid shot or the antibiotics are working! Yayyy! My poor kitty I have kicked her out of the bed the past few nights because we cleaned the sheets and didn't want her to rub the infected area on the blankets (I'm 9 months pregnant and last thing I need is to be sleeping in bacteria-ridden-sheets) but I think it should be safe to let her back up now, she looks like she's starting to heal up. Thanks again for all the responses