What’s causing my cat to pull her fur out?

[WaltersCat]

I noticed last night that my 14yr old female cat has licked the fur off her front left ‘armpit’. I don’t know when it started bothering her and hadn’t noticed her over grooming this area in the past few days.

It was worse this morning and I have a vet appointment for her tomorrow morning.

I’ve cleaned the area and we’re keeping an eye on her to stop her licking any more. She doesn’t seem distressed and will sit quietly for a while but then suddenly starts licking again.

Any idea what it could be causing this?
(Our male cat was pts a few weeks ago but she wasn’t keen on him so I don’t think she’s upset that he’s gone).
I’ll include a pic below this OP.

This was taken this morning.

Fleas.

She’s up to date on flea treatment and hasn’t been scratching.
I can’t see any evidence of fleas in her fur.

My cat does this when she is stressed, she often gets stressed by change. She once groomed herself bald in patches when we moved some rooms around! Your cat could well be stressed by the loss of the other cat, even if she didn’t appear to like him.

It'll be a flea allergy. You are going to have to be meticulous about keeping your cat and home flea free. It's not easy.

You also need to keep your cat as calm as possible with something like Zylkene or Feliway. The itch she feels and the stress she's under with the loss of your other cat will be horrendous for her.

It's very upsetting all round really

Poor thing. Yes, either fleas, stress (any change), or a random insect bite. My cat got some random bite outside on grass one day (no idea what from) and it looked quite unpleasant.

Poor kitty that looks sore! Unfortunately I think it’s just one of those things that could be caused by a whole bunch of things so they will cat it stress.

my cat did it on and off we took her to vets when it was bad once and vet didn’t really have any suggestions. we found out a few months later she had hyperthyroidism. So I think the hyperthyroidism was causing stress.

Christ please don't nuke her for fleas, even though that's what everyone is saying, as you know you'd know if she had fleas.
I've had many animals that either seem to hate each other or just avoided each other, but I've seen the one left behind either at a loss or show some signs of stress.
That looks like a nice clean yank out of fur after grooming, doesn't look especially inflamed.
Is she long haired? Is she prone to dreads?
If not at the moment I'd say stress.

That's a key area that fleas bite.

What does she eat OP? There is a lot of traffic currently about problems from feeding Felix, lots of FB posters stating overgrooming is a concern because of the very low quality of this food. Also concerns about the new .whiskas just introduced, and a few others. Worth considering?

Thank you for all the responses. To answer ThePixies question, she’s a short hair interspersed with long hairs. Half of her litter were long haired and half short. She seems to have both.

Mine did the same when I had the audacity to go on holiday for 3 days leaving a lovely, patient cat sitter to come in and feed, play with and fuss her (or at least try to!) twice a day. Definitely wasn’t fleas as she’s an indoor cat and it’s just me and her here. I took her to the vets and they confirmed it’s stress - she now has a plug in feliway and I also give her valerian (you can buy it dirt cheap off eBay, she has about half a teaspoon of it a day). The fur has now grown back - good luck with your little one!

Looks exactly like one of my cats (other 2 nothing).
Vet may give a steroid injection and antibiotics.
I had to leave my cats for weeks at a time recently and the stress in particular (scabby cat) went through was awful.
I now have re installed a litter tray as he decided not to leave the house.
I'm home now and he's put weight on but these are the things I've done 1. Tried a cat suit which worked for a few days.

1. I put gauze over his leg that in 1 day he locked raw. This worked.
2. Feed only royal canine food.
3. Give him half an anti histamine which has been amazing.

It's not fleas.

Feel free to DM me

Stress

My cat de-furred her entire belly overnight once because a dog came in the house. £600 is cost me in antibiotics and steroids!
Vet also recommended Feliway plug in thing to soothe her.

My cat has this and it’s not fleas, he is on immunosuppressants for it. Sometimes needs steroids for a top up. Good luck 🤞🏻

Just spotted Yddraigoldragon’s question about her diet.

She has various different brands of wet food on rotation. A brand she loves one day, she’ll refuse to eat the next so we currently have Purina Gold, Weebox, Harringtons and Purina Gourmet in the cupboard.
She also has Purina Senior 11+ dry food once a day.

I hadn’t heard about problems with Felix. She used to love Felix Doubly Delicious but started refusing to eat it a while ago so don’t buy it anymore.

We spent all last year trying to work out why our cat had that problem.

She had biopsies. And antibiotics and steroids galore over the year.
They had us put her on an anti allergy diet. Which didn't work.

In the end they blamed unspecified allergies. Said it could be fleas but even though she doesn't have them and nor have we had any in the house, it could flare up from even one bite when out and about in the fields behind the house. She is unhappy as an indoor cat so we weren't keeping her in permanently.

In the end, when steroids didn't work they put her on an (expensive) medication called Atopica. Which is an immunosuppressant. It works thankfully. And once she'd been on a higher dose for a while we were able to reduce it down to a smaller dose just twice a week for maintenance.

She skipped a couple of doses due to us not being careful noting down the days and losing track and she's got a little over groomed patch again, so it def works and she's back on it.

Although she may not have seemed close to your other cat it could still be stress.
Cats can also overgroom due to pain. You need a vet check.
Also not all flea treatment is effective. We use advantage. A single flea bite would set our old girl off.

Stress. My cat has the same (although she doesn't get to the point of it being red). Vet ruled out everything else. We have Feliway, and that's all we can do. She overgrooms one area, and then lets it grow back and moves on to somewhere else.
Vet said to eliminate the cause of stress, but we have no idea what the cause is! It must be outside, but keeping her in makes her a lot more stressed, so we have to let her out.

All Purina foods are risks at the moment. Felix is made by Purina, I have seen lots of posts about Purina One as well as the Gourmet / Gold etc.
The issue is the the quality of the ‘meat’ used, cats are carnivores, and yet there is so little meat in these brands! Animal derivatives can be anything, protein levels of 4%, sugars, lots of stuff that cats should not be eating.
Look at the ingredients, compare the Purina brands to e.g. Lilys Kitchen, there is a vast difference.

Mine 4 were on Felix, one older cat has licked her tummy and paw til they were raw and bleeding. So we now use Blink, Carny, Smilia, Lilys Kitchen etc in rotation and higher meat dried food as well, and they are all looking better. They all seem to have loads more energy and the overgrooming is healing.
to me it is a bit like feeding McDonalds every day. Yes, they like it, but it is no good for them.

Also, we were cleaning up sick virtually daily, basically regurgitated food, both the wet and the dried. Since changing we have seen very little. 2 are fluffy, I expect the occasional hairball, but we don’t see sicked up food now.
there is a fb group, cats affected by Felix food which is worth checking if you are concerned.

Update: The vet thinks it is most likely a stress reaction to the loss of our other cat. She is otherwise healthy and the rest of her skin is in good condition.
She’s got some steroids to take this week but no need to go back unless it gets worse/infected.

Yddraigoldragon, thank you for the information about cat food. I’m glad your cats are better now.
I will definitely look into her diet. We’ve tried some of the more expensive brands like Lily’s kitchen and she won’t touch them but your McDonalds analogy is so true and I need to get better informed about what I’m feeding her.