At about six months old, my kitty Annie developed a skin condition. She yould just scratch and scratch and bite and bite at a patch of skin untill the fur was gone and the skin was torn and bloodied. Then she would move on to another patch.
I spent a small fortune trying to get it diagnosed. I always assumed it was some kind of allergic reaction, and several vets agreed, but we could never pin down what it was. I went to the UW vet school and they did this elaborate (and expensive!) test on something like 40 common allergens, but they all came up negative. I tried I don’t know how many dietary changes – all to no use.
I gave up. I just couldn’t afford to keep testing, as as she seemed an otherwise happy kitty, we left it there. I declawed her so she wouldn’t injure herself so much. Basically she was this way for 8 years – always with 2 or 3 bare patches and scabs on them.
I have to admit I didn’t even hardly register this anymore. And it was only today that I realized – the scabs are gone, the skin is healed, and the fur has grown back. She looks like a normal cat again.
This means of course that she’s probably been healing for a couple of months and I didn’t notice. I feel especially stupid because she often lying on my chest when I wake up on the morning – ok, Mr. Observant I’m not.
There’s nothing major that has come into or gone out of my home. I haven’t changed her food recently. Maybe nothing changed in the home – maybe she just finally adapted to whatever it was. I’ll probably never know.
Mum had a silky terrier that had a similar allergy, though it seemed to be seasonal and would flare up in the summer. We always thought she was allergic to some kind of grass. Once Frontline came on the market and we started using that on her, she never had fleas and the skin condition disappeared. Turns out she was allergic to fleas. The treatments we’d used in the early years just weren’t as effective as Frontline which eradicated them completely.
Anyway, that’s great news for your cat! Congratulations Itch-Free Annie!
Congrats! My kitty with leukemia was looking pretty rough for a few months, but he’s really perked up lately. It’s good to hear that your fuzzbutt is doing well too!
There are a bunch of evangelical Christian TV programs that can induce dramatic healing like that. Chances are that you left the TV while you were out (or she just turned the TV on herself) and she converted without your knowledge. Kitty water bowls make oddly good baptismal fountains.
We had a pair of scabby kitties (grandmother/granddaughter) and our vet treated them for dust mite allergies when they started pulling their fur out and biting themselves. It would work, but it always flaired up again later, meaning another round of tropical skin treatments.
What constitutes stress for an indoor cat when every day is pretty much the same as every other? What would change that would suddenly relieve the stress?
Cats are weird. I have a cat who was diabetic for a year. Then at a checkup after another illness, the vet said he wasn’t anymore. Weird. He sure is glad not to have to have needles jabbed in him several times a day, though.
Maybe the cure was simply for her to age 8 years. This could be a new philosophy of medicine, that of the “Age Cure.” Got an illness? Wait for a significant percentage of your life to pass by and it will go away. I’m suddenly considering writing a book on this.
