Cat Over-grooming, Need Advice.

[beefstew]

Hi everyone,

My cat has been over-grooming very, very obsessively for months now.
We have battled and ruled out fleas (after many treatments and cleaning), and we've tried plug-ins that are supposed to calm her, as well as trying new foods in case of allergies or irritations. We have also tried rounds of steroids.
All of this under supervision and guidance from vets, but she is still going at it and licking herself almost bald and sometimes bloody.
We have tried a cone too, which didn't work well and seems more like a temporary fix.

We haven't moved or changed anything drastic. The only thing I can say is that my wife is pregnant, so I am sure the cat feels some sort of way about it.

I say all of this to say, has anyone had similar experiences with over-grooming cats and maybe have some other options or ideas for treatment? And has anyone had issues with their cat's behaviors changing in this way because of pregnancy or other related changes.

Thank you so much!

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi - welcome, and I'm sorry to hear you're having such challenges.
Try giving some of these a look;
Some cats such as my Big Guy are completely unaffected by Feliway, but there are other products with different ingredients such as L-Tryphophan and casein, and there are collars, diffusers, wipes, treats.

--Even prescription if nothing else, --Gabapentin is good for travel, amitriptyline can help with general anxiety and OCD (such as excessive grooming).

There is Zylkene, Calming Care, Calm-o-mile (chamomile is the main ingredient), Sentry, Natures Miracle calming spray, Vetri-Science's Composure is another item to look at, Pet Remedy (it has valerian) is yet another, as is Essential Pet Pet-ease, Only Natural Pet (brand and website) has a calming product, Pet Naturals also has one I believe.
Lambert Vet Supply is a website to look at, and of course amazon and chewy, also there's Petwishpros, drsfostersmith, animaleo.

There are a couple of recent discussions about calming items, here's the link to one thread. Post #6 in this has a link to the second discussion.
Calming Treats?

 

[Etarre]

When Juniper came to us, she seemed to have groomed the fur off a spot on her tail, and she soon scratched the area above her eye/under her ear until she had a rash there and the hair thinned a bit.

We were able to figure out that she has an allergy to chicken because her eyes puffed up after we fed her chicken lunchmeat one day. Once we eliminated all chicken from her diet, the rash went away, and her tail hair is now just about regrown after 4 months.

She had been in a shelter prior to us adopting her, and I'm sure her everday food had some sort of chicken product in it, albeit probably not a huge amount (I'm assuming it was not super high quality stuff). We had switched her to better quality food that had real chicken in in, not chicken by-product, and a higher ration of protein (including chicken!) and that probably actually made everything worse!

But it took awhile for her to heal. You said that your vet considered allergies and you tried new foods. Based on our experience, it took quite some time for the rash/overgrooming to subside after we switched her food, and I can't even imagine how much harder it would have been to diagnose the allergy if she had multiple food allergies-- I've read that cats are often allergic to both chicken and turkey, for instance. So maybe you have a particularly persistent food allergy or some sort of environmental factor at work?

....or maybe it's something completely different. Just wanted to share our experience with a food allergy that had similar symptoms in case it's helpful to you. Good luck figuring out the problem!

 

[beefstew]

Thank you so much for your response!

I will definitely try some of these other options for sure.