When Vets Scratch Their Heads: Hair Gone


 Wooper (inside, on the catio) communicates with Nellie, a neighbor's cat, on the outside.
Wooper is our gatekeeper cat, always checking up on anyone outside who might try to come in.


Our Wooper, quite a character on a regular day, some years ago took to licking off all her hair. Concerned, when both her sides were showing a lot of skin -- we wondered how she could not be cold -- we took her to the vet for help.  

The vet scratched his head. He had never seen anything like this. (That is Not what a pet owner wants to hear from a vet.)

He suggested that maybe she was itchy and gave us some anti-itch crean. We applied it faithfully even though it turned her skin and our hands black.

But she continued licking, and the hairlessness of both her sides grew. We read everything we could find online. Nothing seemed to fit among the few pieces of information we came across.

After a while, she had no hair on either side of her body. For some reason -- happenstance, for sure -- she had grown more interactive and wanted to be petted a lot. (This was new.) She would purr in ways we have never known her to purr (she has a weak voice, cannot meow, and her purrs are very faint), but she would get excited about being petted.

Once, we had had a vet who came to the house, and she advocated and taught pet massage. Since Wooper liked being petting at length, I tried messaging her. She went to the moon! She just loved the massages and would come to me several times a day, tap on my arm (her way of gaining attention, not have a voice), and wait for her massage.

With time, I noticed that hair had started growing back. The more I massaged her, very firmly, the less she licked. Whether the massage was helping with the itching or solving some other nurturing need was less important, she was clearly asking for massages, the firmer the better, in lieu of self-soothing or managing itchiness. 

In caring for dozens of cats, many with issues (sometimes unique ones), I have learned that luck and trial-and-error can play a big role in good care. So can following a cat's own lead.


To read more Caturday posts, click HERE.

To read more posts about cats, click HERE.


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