Two year old female losing fur

[Wornouttoday]

Help! We’ve never had this problem in 25 years of owning cats. The fur loss is occurring on one side , at the top of a back leg and stretches under to her belly. The patch is getting bigger.

She’s had it for a couple of months, she’s well in herself, very active and good appetite, and is up to date with flea and worming treatments as well as her annual vaccination.

If anyone has any advice we’d be so happy to hear it. TIA!

Vets

It could be stress or an allergy - I’d get her checked at the vets for peace of mind but in my experience it’s one of those things where it could be any number of conditions and you just need to work through them and rule them out one by one.

Thank you, much appreciated. I had looked online but as you say there could be several different causes. I’m booking her into the vet today.

You could try Feliway and Zylkene, if it's over-grooming due to stress those can help.

I’ve had two cats with fur loss - one was a flea allergy despite her being treated, and the other was stress-related. With the first cat we just changed treatment and she was fine, for the second we had to let him outside (he was previously an indoor cat) and make sure he never got shut in anywhere as he found it incredibly stressful.

This happened to my cat when she was about 6. The vet diagnosed stress (there was a very obvious source of stress). She had treatment for some skin infections that had resulted from the hair loss (it wasn't the cause), and the vet recommended the purple Feliway plug in to calm her . I was sceptical but it did seem to work.

I’m really appreciative of these comments. Thanks everyone. Going to the vet later. It may be stress as we have a bad tempered bigger older cat, male, who doesn’t like her very much. He never attacks her but she’s wary of him.

One of my cats had this many many years ago, before the word "stress" became an every day word for humans let along pets and Feliway an every day solution. Anyway, vet diagnosed hormonal imbalance and prescribed medication (can't remember what) and said to stop giving her fish based food. Wasn't long before her fur started to grow back.

When our cat started losing fur round her tail, the vet did blood tests and found she had a thyroid deficiency, so put her on thyroxine. Interestingly, my mum was on exactly the same tablets, but she took them every other day, whereas the cat took one a week. And had mum not been getting hers as a chronic prescription, so free, it would have been cheaper for her to buy her tablets from the vet than to pay for the prescription!

I never asked mum if the fur had fallen out round her tail! 😂

This is all so helpful , thanks everyone.

Had the same with my boy. He licked his fur off in patches. No fleas but the vet explained it was in fact a flea allergy. One flea could have bitten him and started off the reaction.