About a week and a half ago I noticed my cat had irritated one of his nipples. It was red and swollen and he wouldn’t quit licking it. I dug out his soft elizabethan cone and put it on him and waited for him to heal, and a few days ago his nipple appeared to have completely healed, so off came the cone. Now today I see that he is irritating it again. I am going to call the vet and set an appointment, but this is kind of an odd problem and I have never seen a cat lick their nipple until it is raw. Why is he doing this? Has anyone else ever had their cat do this? Is the vet going to laugh at me when I call her and tell her he just can’t quit touching himself?
Well, he’s just a kinky cat. It probably started off that the irritated nipple made him lick it and now he’s “into it”, so to speak.
Either find him some other cats that will lick his nipples for him, lick his nipples yourself(odd), or let him lick his nipples.
It’s basically a habit now, I imagine.
He might have had a mosquito bite in the area of the nipple. On my cats, the fur is thinner around the kitty titty. One of my guys was in this habit. He has expanded it, now, to keeping his hangbelly hair-free. But his boobies look fine and are non-irritated. He is not a nervous cat, and presumably he is a little cooler with the air flow on his catboobies.
When my cat started, he had a small red welt in the area that was presumably an itchy bite which began the habit. Naturally anything I might apply to the site would only be licked off, so the vet suggested we just distract him when we see him doing it. His nippies don’t look chafed anymore, so the velvety pink tummy region has only become one of his countless small weirdnesses.
My cat was overgrooming her belly and licking all the fur off her nipples, to the point that the skin was getting irritated. Turned out to be a food allergy. This makes their skin itch, so they lick themselves excessively in a behavior called “mowing.” We have her on a limited ingredient diet (Hill’s d/d Venison & Green Pea formula). It’s expensive as hell, but her mowing stopped. Take your kitty to the vet and ask about it.
Wow. I hope that’s not mine’s problem. He’s already on a restricted diet. I’d hate to have to experiment on him again, food-wise.
This page lists a variety of possible causes:
My cat’s itching is located to just one spot, specifically one of his lower left nipples. He is not doing this anywhere else, just that one spot, and he is so intent on licking that spot that he has actually broken it open so that it is bleeding. It healed when I put the cone on him, but even after all this time he is still going at it. I am going to call the vet today and set an appointment. I need to figure out what is going on before he ends up with a completely naked, bleeding belly.
My cat had the same thing going on and the vet checked him for bugs and did a skin culture. Everything appeared to be fine but they gave me a blue wash* to use on the area and that took care of it after about a week.
*This stuff, about three ounces of it in a squeezy bottle.
Oh, just stomp on his head. He loves it.
(Bonus points to people who catch the reference.)
I had a “mowing” cat, and the solution was so simple, it was frightening: No plastic food or water dishes. This helped even more that getting rid of soy in his diet (which wasn’t a bad move either)
That’s what my ex-fiancee said to my present one. I don’t think that’s the reference you had in mind, though.
I did just change his water dish to a plastic bowl…I will switch his bowl tonight and see if that helps at all. Thanks!
And I don’t get the stomp on his head thing, but I assure you he wouldn’t like it. He gets upset when he is accidentally punted across the room if you get up to go to the bathroom at night, so I don’t think he would like stomping. 
None of you people ever read Bloom County, huh?
Fiends!
I hate to do the standard “see your vet” but you really should. It could be a behavioral problem, basically Kitty OCD, or there could be something wrong with that nipple that is causing him to fuss with it and even if you can’t see something doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.
I know, that is why I called the vet and set him an appointment. We are new here though and he doesnt have a regular vet yet, so it is kind of a shot in the dark and hoping that the closest vet to us turns out to be decent and not so expensive that I can’t afford to eat next month. Here’s hoping it all goes well.
He’s lactating? He has an irritated piercing? Nah, I got nothing. See a vet.