- Joined
- Dec 10, 2013
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Hi everyone. New poster to this forum, but not new reader.
I've searched high and low for the answer to the problem my poor cat is having, and I've found some good answers, but my cat has slightly different circumstances, and I'm afraid to try too many things until I figure out if it will hurt her further.
Alice is a 3 year old short haired kitty, with feline herpes. When she was a kitten, her eyes were crusted shut with mucus, and she had upper respiratory infections quite regularly, to the point where we nicknamed her Darth Vadar because she couldn't breathe through her nose. Now, the most she gets is a little crusting around her nose, but is otherwise "healthy". We rescued her quite young, and she's always been very skittish. She jumps at the littlest noises, and we've come to discover that changing any little thing (moving the furniture, picking up a plastic bag she liked from the floor, etc) can really upset her.
All of these "normal" behavioral issues aside, she has started to lick and bite her fur off. She will lay on the couch and lick her stomach until it's a light pink with almost no fur, and her front two paws are now completely pink as well, she actually rips the fur from between her toes. She's started on her back legs as well. I was super worried at first that it was a Herpes symptom, because we've noticed she loses fur around her ears sometimes and she's definitely not licking there.
She has a consistent appetite, and plays with the same enthusiasm as usual, so it doesn't appear that she is in constant discomfort. We took her to the vet a few times, and the results of the visits have been less than satisfactory. The vet say it could be a million things, and that we could try anything from changing the litter, to changing the food, to starting her on an antihistimine for itching etc etc. This is a good time to mention that we have another cat, around 4 years old, who has no issues whatsoever. He's perfectly fine with any sort of change, and behaves more like a dog normally, so we aren't too concerned with changing litter or food for him.
My aunt is a vet who lives out of my state, and I asked her about it, and she said she thinks it might be a food allergy, and the safest thing to start with is to change food brands/proteins/dry to canned. Another problem is that Alice gains weight really fast. We had to take her off of wet food because she won't let Thomas have any and licks the entire helping clean in one sitting. I control the portions and even put the cats in separate rooms to eat, but she is still a few pounds overweight and I don't want it to get worse.
We had them on Authority (the sensitive solutions one) because Thomas was throwing up the other brand we had them on. They were both perfectly happy on Authority for probably a year and a half. The ripping of the fur has been going on for a while, but I don't know the exact time that I noticed it. I'd say at least 5 months though. We switched to a different protein, still Authority though. She took to it immediately, and didn't have any problems switching. I know hair can take a while to grow back, but she is still vigorously chewing her fur.
What I'm really here to ask is: the suggestions others have made about this situation...is there anything I should be scared about as far as Herpes goes? I don't want her to get sick or have another reaction to something.
Not sure if this is worth noting either, but Alice wouldn't clean herself when she was a kitty. Thomas cleaned her because she was too sick and tired and had no energy to keep herself up. He would lick her face and back and make for 20 minutes sometimes and she would fall asleep. I don't know if she vigorously cleans herself now because she learned from him or what, but she definitely spends more time doing it than he does.....
Thanks for your help in advance!!
I've searched high and low for the answer to the problem my poor cat is having, and I've found some good answers, but my cat has slightly different circumstances, and I'm afraid to try too many things until I figure out if it will hurt her further.
Alice is a 3 year old short haired kitty, with feline herpes. When she was a kitten, her eyes were crusted shut with mucus, and she had upper respiratory infections quite regularly, to the point where we nicknamed her Darth Vadar because she couldn't breathe through her nose. Now, the most she gets is a little crusting around her nose, but is otherwise "healthy". We rescued her quite young, and she's always been very skittish. She jumps at the littlest noises, and we've come to discover that changing any little thing (moving the furniture, picking up a plastic bag she liked from the floor, etc) can really upset her.
All of these "normal" behavioral issues aside, she has started to lick and bite her fur off. She will lay on the couch and lick her stomach until it's a light pink with almost no fur, and her front two paws are now completely pink as well, she actually rips the fur from between her toes. She's started on her back legs as well. I was super worried at first that it was a Herpes symptom, because we've noticed she loses fur around her ears sometimes and she's definitely not licking there.
She has a consistent appetite, and plays with the same enthusiasm as usual, so it doesn't appear that she is in constant discomfort. We took her to the vet a few times, and the results of the visits have been less than satisfactory. The vet say it could be a million things, and that we could try anything from changing the litter, to changing the food, to starting her on an antihistimine for itching etc etc. This is a good time to mention that we have another cat, around 4 years old, who has no issues whatsoever. He's perfectly fine with any sort of change, and behaves more like a dog normally, so we aren't too concerned with changing litter or food for him.
My aunt is a vet who lives out of my state, and I asked her about it, and she said she thinks it might be a food allergy, and the safest thing to start with is to change food brands/proteins/dry to canned. Another problem is that Alice gains weight really fast. We had to take her off of wet food because she won't let Thomas have any and licks the entire helping clean in one sitting. I control the portions and even put the cats in separate rooms to eat, but she is still a few pounds overweight and I don't want it to get worse.
We had them on Authority (the sensitive solutions one) because Thomas was throwing up the other brand we had them on. They were both perfectly happy on Authority for probably a year and a half. The ripping of the fur has been going on for a while, but I don't know the exact time that I noticed it. I'd say at least 5 months though. We switched to a different protein, still Authority though. She took to it immediately, and didn't have any problems switching. I know hair can take a while to grow back, but she is still vigorously chewing her fur.
What I'm really here to ask is: the suggestions others have made about this situation...is there anything I should be scared about as far as Herpes goes? I don't want her to get sick or have another reaction to something.
Not sure if this is worth noting either, but Alice wouldn't clean herself when she was a kitty. Thomas cleaned her because she was too sick and tired and had no energy to keep herself up. He would lick her face and back and make for 20 minutes sometimes and she would fall asleep. I don't know if she vigorously cleans herself now because she learned from him or what, but she definitely spends more time doing it than he does.....
Thanks for your help in advance!!