I have a problem and it's been going on for months now.

I have two cats, Jane and Leland. They are outside cats, all year for Leland and summers for Jane. They are about 12 years old.

As with many outside cats, I have had intermittent problems with fleas. If I use Frontline, it cures the flea problem in a month or two, but it is expensive and I get lazy. When I haven't treated them with Frontline, Leland has had a tendency over the years to pull out his hair. If I go back to treating them, both the flea and the hair problems go away.

This winter I started to have a problem with both cats pulling out their hair. They will attack a patch and pull it all out until it is just bare pink skin. It was unusual in the winter but I started the Frontline treatment (I normally stop in the winter) and it didn't help. Jane never before has pulled out her hair and Leland just kept on doing it. I ended up taking them to the vet and, with other work being done on them, have spent $1,200 so far this year to solve the problem. Nothing has worked. They still are pulling out their hair. They also both sneeze. Jane only occasionally but Leland all the time.

So far we've tired:

- A different flea medication. We switched to Advantage. The idea is Advantage will keep the fleas from landing at all on them. No go. It just got worse. I've gone back to Frontline and am giving them lately 1.5 times dosages (a full dose at the beginning of the month and a half dose maybe 10 days later).

- Skin biopsy. No sign of mold or fungus.

- Fecal sample. No sign of worms but when I did give them their quarterly worm pill, for about a week the hair problem almost went away. It was 90% better. But then it came back full force.

- Cortisone shot. The first one cured them for three weeks (the vet says this was the amount of time he expected) but the second shot did much less. We stopped the treatment after that as it can cause liver damage.

- I changed their litter boxes completely. Leland never uses the boxes anyway.

I am at my wit's end. I pick up tufts of hair all over the house that they have pulled out. I have the name of a veterinary dermatologist but he is well out of town and I'm not looking forward to the car ride. My cats, like most, hate cars. But I will put up with it to solve this problem.

Any other ideas out there?

are you absolutly sure it's fleas and not a mental thing. Cats do that when they are subjected to changes in thier lifes, like different work hours from their owners, a new dog next door, food, ...........they get nervouse very easily.

Nervousness causes stress which causes hair loss.

If it is fleas, i guess you have to stick to it!
jurn

Don't laugh, Allergies.


Dom

have you thought about having the cats shaved completely for the summer? Can you give a cat a flea bath like you can a dog? Once the fleas are gone don't let them out of the house anymore.

Don't laugh, Allergies.
My vet thinks it's allergies. They are allergic to fleas.

It could be stress, but they have gone through some bad times in the past - a move combined with my absence for days on end, and another time when I was gone for 7 weeks, then 3 weeks, and they have never exhibited this behavior before.

They seem to be happy with their tails up in the air and talkative. After all these years I can read them pretty well.

They did both seem to be even a little more pleased with life after the worm pill when they problem almost completely disappeared.

And no, I'm not convinced any more the problem is fleas. I'm not convinced of anything.

I'll ask the dermatologist about the shave.

I have a cat with allergies (not flea allergies, on Revolution and indoor only). When hers flare up she gets 1/2 a OTC generic Chlortrimeton (for humans) tablet 2X a day (morning & evening) (per her vet) and that takes care of it. Usually within 24 hours she has improvement. When the allergies 1st started we also put her on 1 5mg prednisone every 3 days to get the reaction under control, but that isn't needed any more, just the Chlortrimetron. She had hair falling out and severe itching - she had no hair in the top of her head and had begun pulling it out elsewhere. Not any more - at the 1st sign of sneezing, skin crawling etc she gets a pill and we are easily able to keep it under control. I have a dog with the same seasonal allergies - she gets Timerol P from the vet while the cat takes the cheaper and easily obtained OTC Chlortrimetron. The cat's med works faster and better.
Here is what Panda B looks like now - beautiful siamese X 2 yrs old with a perfect coat (shiny and thick) and no bald spots!
And no stress either (obviously) :D
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y59/inkstudios/Little%20Bit%20Of%20Everything/p4.jpg

As posted for a few others, I am a veterinarian and will be glad to throw out a few more ideas/issues if you want a long distance consult-pm me if interested:)

What kind of food have you been feeding them? With older cats I have seen develop allergies to their food they didn't have when they were younger. I'm not a fan of foods like Purina One and Cat Chow. Or any food that is bought in the supermarket. Could you try switching to a better quality food like California Natural or Innova?

It is either a case of kitty nerves or allergy of some kind.

Thanks, elevet. I may well PM you. Also thanks for the info, Tango. I'll research that.

My cats are the biggest chow hounds of any I've ever owned. I've had cats for close to 30 years and as they've all been outside cats, needless to say I've had a lot of them (outside cats don't generally live the longest). Every other cat I've ever had, and I usually have two, in the winter I'll feed them a can of meat maybe every 3 days and dry food the rest of the time. In the summer, with their hunting, I won't feed them meat at all. Maybe a can every other week if they get real demanding. Not Jane and Leland. I feed them two cans of meat a day, every day of the year. Sometimes three if they are real crabby. In addition they have dry food and I know they are hunting. I see the carcasses. I don't know where they put it. Jane is 7 3/4 pounds, Leland about 8 1/2. They are little things that have a metabolism that won't stop. They've eaten this way since they were kittens. So did a sibling raised by friends until he ran into something bigger one night and didn't come back.

As for specifics, it's generic Friskee's/KalCan stuff. I rotate the brand daily so they don't get bored.

My cats eat so much meat they can have dog farts. It's not often but they can. :grin:

I'll talk to my vet about changing their diet, SookiE. I could go with something better. I might go broke. :razz:

our cat does it. the vet told us that some cats decide they don't want hair on certain parts of their body. you can either let them do it or give them nerve pills, which makes them gain weight. our cat was on a diet, so we left her alone. she doesn't have hair on her belly now, but that's it. my sister's cat does the same thing. i have no idea why, maybe their just vain. i'm sure most people have shaved parts of their bodies for years and we don't put them on drugs.

I'd vote for nerves... I think they may be "acting out." When I had a single cat, she did this... until the vet suggested a playmate. Turns out she was BORED.

I'd suggest one of the foods you can get from a vet (they can tell you which one), and this nifty little plug-in device that emits calming pheremones (also available from vets). Some folks use them to stop males' spraying behavior, as it calms cats down.8)

Good luck!

Frontline quit working for me and later, my vet confirmed that this is an area wide problem. I switched to Revolution and it's working great.

It's hip to be bald.

I'll talk to my vet about changing their diet, SookiE. I could go with something better. I might go broke. :razz:

Actually, we spend less on dog and cat food than people think. The old saying applies here, the less garbage you put in the less you get out. (And the less you are scooping out of the litter box.) Hope you can get it cleared up.

I may be making headway on this problem. We'll see.

One thing I didn't mention because I forgot about it is that occasionally Jane has given me a rash. Initially the vet thought ringworm, which is actually a fungus, but there was no evidence of that in the skin biopsy. Jane has always been a cuddler and periodically, her cuddling gets extreme. Lately it's been that way. When this happens, I sometimes get itchy skin, too. In talking to my vet about some of the issues brought up here, he thought there has to be mites or something similar that he just can't find. He gave me a flea and tick powder, Adams Flea and Tick Dust II, made by SmithKline Beecham, that I brushed into their fur. I applied it a couple of days ago and by today they have stopped pulling out their hair. It's a start.

Again, I'm a bit leery because I've been here before, with them stopping this behavior for a while, only to have it come back again. The vet recommended I treat them with this powder once a week. I am also keeping up the heavy Frontline treatments, giving them a full dose the first of the month and a half dose about 10 days in.

Now if I could only stop my itching! :-D

(actually, for me, a thorough shower does the trick)

try switching food - Ruby gets Flint River Ranch cat food. She has a beautiful coat for a 17-year old angora cat.

When we go away for a weekend, Ruby is alone in the house and tends to pull out her fur by her tail. Vet said it is stress....