I have a siamese attack cat who is usually the head of the household in his little world. Lately, he has been more than a little at odds with our female siamese attack cat. Understanding feline acne and not getting along with your mate are mutually exclusive does anyone have any experience with feline acne?
He has tiny bumps under his chin that are red and within a day or two turn black. I can only assume this is feline acne from what web diagnosing I have done. My problem is I have seen it onto his lower gums and it looks painful. Can I put neosporine right one it? Or is there some other natural remedy I could use? Any Ideas?
Several of our cats have feline acne, but only on the outside of the chin. I’ve never noticed black spots on the gums, and worry that whatever is on his gums is something else that bothers him.
In any case, cats are very susceptable to poisons, including many things humans don’t find toxic. Use an antibiotic that says it’s OK for cats in particular, if you use any.
My vet gave me a cream called pyoban gel (or something like that). It was basically benzoyl peroxide, though I don’t know the concentrations. It helped a little, but what really fixed it, whas moving to a different house. Also washing the food dishes every day helped.
Kitt gets them on his chin. To help keep them down, I changed all the food dishes from plastic to stainless steel and wash them thoroughly every day. Then I hit those black spots with a soft toothbrush to loosen up the crud, which he really seems to enjoy. He’s much improved.
We have a cat who had a life-threatening case of feline acne two years ago. He’s elderly (not sure exactly how old, but in the 13-16 range now) and had had mild cases of it before, but one day his chin was swollen to more than twice its usual size. We thought he might have a tumor. The vet anesthetized him and gave him a very thorough scouring - like the debridement you have to get after serious road rash. He looked awful afterwards.
The vet gave us two topical treatments - pads to cleanse, and an antibiotic ointment. The cat refused to cooperate with the ointment more than twice. We also gave him an oral antiB. On the vet’s advice, we switched his plastic (melamine) food dish for a glass one. He has had only a few blackheads since then.
I think a quick (and free) call to your vet would let you know if Neosporin etc. is advisable, adn whether the spots on his gums are likely to be related.
I had a cat who was prone to feline acne - she’s still prone to it, but not as much - and as soon as I changed the bowls to china instead of plastic, it went away. She used to have several pimples at a time on her chin, for weeks on end, and now she gets perhaps one every 8 months or so.
On the gums??? I have never heard of acne showing up on a cat’s gums. I would DEFINITELY see the vet about that.
Any sort of discoloration of the gums is call enough for a trip to the vet. It might be as simple as pokey food causing small wounds, or gingivitis, or it could be any of several viral or bacterial infections, any of which can become life threatening if they get bad.
Have it checked.
If it is just acne: The recent stuff I’m hearing from vet dermatologists here is that there is debate over whether the acne is really an allergic reaction, or if it’s just an individual difference that comes and goes like human acne.
That said, changing the food dishes to clear, uncolored glass, keeping them washed frequently, and washing pet bedding in hypoallergenic soap seems to help a lot of the patient’s I’ve worked with.
Thank you…we have stainless steel water and food bowls we change the water 2 sometimes 3 times a day. And the food bowls are washed once a week if that really…so we should probably wash those more.
Could be feline stomatitis. One of mine had it bad, the only solution was to pull all her teeth. As awful as that sounds, she was very young and hardly ate anything because of the gum pain, and therefore not putting on enough weight. Once the teeth were gone, she started eating like a piglet and became a normal happy frisky kitten.
As for the chin zits, I agree with others who have said that changing the bowls from plastic to ceramic seems to have done the trick.
This is really interesting. Our cat had bad chin acne too, for years, and we couldn’t get rid of it even after changing food dishes, getting another kitty who helped him clean, etc. (Note, new kitty not obtained for solely for that purpose. )
We did recently get his bad food allergies finally under control, and now the kitty acne is gone! Hmm, I hadn’t connected the two before. I wonder…
We don’t wash their bedding with hypoallergenic soap, but the cat blankets do get washed frequently. One of our cats had acne on her chin and lips, and changing from a small plastic bowl to a larger ceramic bowl ended her blackheads. So chalk up another anecdote for that method.
Like I said. Both of our cats (one in particular) had acne for the entire month and a half that we lived in our last apartment. The one cat had it so bad, it looked more like exzema than acne. We weren’t washing their food dishes regularly, but they were the same dishes they used back at the old apartment where there wasn’t a problem.
Finally we gave in and started washing their food dishes every day. The acne really did start to clear up. Then we moved. Now we have no problem. We still wash the food dishes, but not as regularly as before. The one that had the bad acne has some scarring. Poor baby.
My kitten broke out with it on his skin when I first adopted him. Poor thing, his entire chin fur fell out and he had that nasty black dirt looking stuff. I think it might have been stress induced but I also think his plastic food dishes caused it at least partially.
a) Got rid of all the plastic food dishes
b) And this is what truly helped-I gently washed his chin with Cetaphil every night. He was SO happy about that, let me tell you. He has only had a little bit of the black “dirt” since I cleared it up with the first time-I massaged in the cetaphil, rinsed it off with water and haven’t seen any outbreaks since. I think the last time I saw it (just breaking out) was approximately 3 months ago.
Washing the food dish more frequently helped clear it up for our cat. The vet gave us some cleaning solution of some sort, but I didn’t use much of it. Missy didn’t like it one bit.
