Overgrooming to the point of baldness

[oldwomaninashoe]

Hi, I've had cats all my life but have not come across this before.
We "homed" a lovely boy about 6 weeks ago that had been an abandoned stray for a couple of years. He had been treated for a flea allergy as his "lower half" was bald. He is a bag of nerves but is slowly coming to trust us and is affectionate.
However if anything upsets him, he starts to over groom taking out great lumps of his fur and grazing his skin.
I've arranged a home visit with the vet next week, but wondered if any of you have had experience of this.
I have been using the Feliway defuser but although I'm sure it helps its obviously not enough!

Oh God I have had some success with picking my neoritic little creature up and forcing her to be petted when she does this. It seems the stroking does calm her but other than that - arrrrgh

Just make sure his frontline is WELL up to date, because on fleabite can set josie off thinking she has a complete infestation and only complete baldness from the neck down will satisfy her. The tosser.

Yes, my old cat used to do this when she was being bullied by another big cat outside (she was tiny!). Apparently it is quite a common stress reaction - and I would have suggested Feliway first.

Apparently there is a new stress treatment now (one of my cats has stress-related cystitis) which is based on milk protein (? if I remember rightly). We've not got as far as that yet, but that might be the next step.

But it may just be that he will settle down in a while - certainly my old cat did stop when she wasn't stressed.

Onesandwichshort is talking about zylkene which can be very useful in these cats. It works synergistically with feliway. It is also worth visiting www.fabcats.org as they have really good tips for environmental enrichment to help stressed cats.

I just readthe title and I thought flea dermatitis... but I see you've treated that. Frontline has stopped working for us, we now use stronghold.

You are already doing everything I would suggest.

hope he's more settled soon, it might just be time wih you sorts him.... :)

One of my friend's cats did this after having a skin complaint. She had to keep a cone on him for a while to give the sore patch a chance to recover. She was still using it as an over-grooming deterrent for a little while but it seems to have done the trick.