As if there aren’t enough. My friend has 3 cats, 2 of whom go outside. They are fine. The one that doesn’t has rough spots on him, especially his head, they itch. Shes thinking hes allergic to something in the house, as he doesn’t go out. She said he lies in laundry, I’m thinking it may be the detergent.
Is there (if this is the reason) a detergent for clothes that won’t affect cats? She cannot afford to take him to a vet to see for sure.
When I had GOOD CAT, he had the same thing. It turned out he was allergic to the outdoors- flowers, mosquito bites, etc. It’s an autoimmune thing with a very long name. Anyway, solution was prednisone for 10 days, plus being inside cat. This stopped the bumpy itchy sometimes-crusty spots on his head and neck, with very limited recurrences (Chrysanthemum plants, etc). Try keeping your CRUSTY CAT inside, perhaps put a very little cortisone cream on his rough bits. Bathing CRUSTY CAT will remove allergens from his fur, which might also help. We bathe BAD CAT regularly, and he does not so much mind. GOOD CAT got baths too, and tolerated them fairly well.
It does sound like an allergy. I would try and find a vet that takes payments - unless by “can’t afford a vet” actually means that she doesn’t want to spend any money on the cat, in which case maybe she should try and find another home for the poor thing.
She can’t afford it but she lives with someone who is working, not sure how their financial situation is. I will tell her to try bathing the cat.
The term you seek is granuloma.
They can have contact dermatitis reactions to pretty much any detergent, same as we can. The most common trouble-causing ingredients are dyes and perfumes, so if she wants to try changing the detergent, I’d look for a formulation that’s listed as being free of those. But contact dermatitis like that tends to manifest as licking their tummies bald in kitties, rather than self-mutilation (scratching till they make sores, which is what it sounds like is going on here.)
This sounds more like fleas or inhalant allergies to me. I know he doesn’t go outside to get fleas, but they can catch rides in on the other two cats. Cats can be extra-sensitive to flea bites the same way humans can be extra-sensitive to mosquito bites. You ever know somebody who gets a mosquito bite and it blows up the size of a half-dollar? And it seems like the mosquitoes all bite that person and leave everyone else alone? Cats and dogs can be that way with fleas–the very irritation and inflammation caused by bites makes them more attractive to fleas. Flea control for everybody would be a good step, if she could at all manage it. If it’s inhalant allergies, she could try an antihistamine like chlorpheniramine, but getting pills down a cat every day is a right royal pain in the arse.
Shes checked the other cats, no fleas at all.
Semi-hijack:
Alright, when people ask questions on behalf of “my friend”:
- it’s now mainly done in a tongue in cheek way
- people who talk about their friends’ problem believe most posters will truly believe it is their friends’ problems
- there really are a lot of people who post about their friends’ problems
The cat already doesn’t go outside. It seems as if he’s allergic to something in the house. No ideas, myself, because I don’t have a cat.
I’m coming into this a little late, but I thought I would add that this could also be a food allergy. Our cat recently came down with the same symptoms - rough itchy patches, mostly on his face and head - and our vet said that in an indoor-only cat, it was most likely an allergy to something he was eating.
Your friend might want to try switching itchy-kitty to a hypoallergenic/limited ingredient cat food for a bit to see if that helps (ideally one where the main protein is something the cat hasn’t eaten before - otherwise the cat might just end up getting more of what it’s allergic to.) We used Natural Balance’s Green Pea and Duck formula and started seeing results within a week or so.
Once the itchiness subsided, we started adding our cat’s old food back in until we figured out what he was having a problem with (in our case, it turns out he’s allergic to fish) but if the hypoallergenic food works your friend could always just stick with that.