Cat Losing Fur (pics added)

[WickWood]

Hi there,

We've noticed that one of our cats fur has started to thin on the side and back slightly.

We are pretty sure it isn't fleas, she is allergic to flea bites and when we got her (she is from a rescue centre) she was covered in scabs, she has no scabs now. She is deflead, as are the others even though they only go in the garden. There are no signs of fleas in our other two.

Does anyone have any ideas of what this may be?

We believe she is around 2 years old. We will take her to the vets, however she has been once before and she was absolutely terrified, it was a trauma getting her there and she was terrified of even us afterwards.

Thank you 🙂

Cats can often get bald patches due to stress, they’re very sensitive to changes in their environment. Have you redecorated, moved house, changed your routine or anything recently? Even something that would seem quite smal

Has she lost weight? Appetite changes?

Might be worth having her thyroid checked, especially if she's gone browner than usual in the sun.

This happened/happens with our cat. It started when our baby started to crawl.

Well I know you are saying it’s not fleas but this is what happens to our flea allergic cat when bitten. We have all out cats deflead every three months with bravecto. We have it ordered on repeat prescription from the vets so we don’t forget. If we go over by a couple of weeks then the over grooming and hair loss starts.

True, cats with flea allergies ought to be treated monthly.

Could be another allergy, too.

Oh and there is never any sign of fleas, but treating them stops the issue.

There are many things this could be so you really need a vet to confirm - it could be stress, a parasite such as fleas or mange etc, an allergic reaction (ironically we had a cat who was allergic to flea collars), a skin disease

Thanks all.

No changes in her environment that I can think of, it's just me and my other half and our two other cats, it's a very quiet house really.

No change of appetite or weight loss.

It sounds like it probably is fleas then. Just to say, we do flea them regularly, I made it sound like it was done as a one off in my opening post. Would there be any other sign of fleas? We've never seen any on the cats, no over grooming, itching etc.

I will deflea them all once a month and then go to the vet if no changes or if anything else happens before then. I've also just realised that our insurance does a video consultation so I'll do that in the first instance.

Thanks again!

Do you notice her licking herself more often or more aggressively?

We rescued a stray cat last year and she lost quite a bit of fur after she joined us, turned out she was just overgrooming (although she was much happier and better fed I think she was stressed about sharing a space with our other cats perhaps). She had to go on steroids for a while and she stopped overgrooming and her fur grew back slowly, the first couple of times we tried to wean her off the steroids she started doing it again but the third time was the charm and now she's not on steroids and not overgrooming any more.

Key indicator is that the fur is only missing where they can easily lick! So for her it was mainly her rump and then down the sides of her back legs, but never on her neck or chest.

@Pamisu
Aww I'm glad your cat has stopped overgrooming!

I think she possibly is grooming more than the others and it does fit, as the hair loss is on her back.

What did the steroids help with? Was there an infection/allergy?

I'm not 100% clear on the science. I think the vet said it could be overgrooming due to anxiety (so the grooming would be self soothing but she's overdoing it) or due to an allergy which was aggravating her like excema and that is what the steroids would help.

The steroids did help, and it proved that they were helping that she went back to doing it the first couple of times we came off them. That indicates that it was an allergic type reaction, NOT just stress, but I don't see what in her environment has changed other than her being less stressed as she settled into our home! It might be related that she had two ticks when we first had her, which looked like very recent additions, we got them off her quickly but not sure if it could have been a reaction to something from those.

The sort of midway theory is that it's like excema being exacerbated by stress, so stress is the root cause but the steroids helped with the itchiness, but I'm not sure if that's what the vet said or what I have come up with in the time since... To be honest, it worked and that's what I care about even if I don't know exactly how it worked!

I think steroids are often a starting point for vets (another of my cats is on them for inflammation of her airways due to congenital defects, not asthma as we originally suspected) as they don't have bad side effects in the short term, are relatively inexpensive and seeing whether they work or not is useful for diagnosis.

I suggest you take her to the vet and get it sorted before it gets any worse because our cat looked pretty dreadful with half her fur missing and also being so skinny! Her tail fur was mostly licked off except for one bit in the middle that looked like a toilet brush whenever she got aggy and fluffed her tail up. At its worst, she got some really nasty sores where she kept licking even where there was no fur. Pics of her then and now...

My cat had this. Diagnosis was ‘allergies’ and he had to have 2 steroid injections to get it under control. To what we don’t know but we are now fleaing monthly and feeding hypoallergenic food as a precaution. Hasn’t returned thankfully.

This is happening to my cat. He's 15 so I just assume age.