I am worried about my cat who is over grooming

I have a fantastic cat named Athena. She is about six years old and she has always been extremely loving and affectionate. About a year ago she started over grooming her belly and the inside of all four of her legs, to the point where she has no fur left there at all and she sometimes gives herself sores from licking so much. I took her to the vet and they said it might be an allergy and gave her an injection but it didn't seem to do much of anything. There were no changes in her lifestyle or personality directly prior to her developing this habit, or afterwards for that matter. I am starting to get very worried about her and I just don't know what to do for her. Every time I catch her doing it I try to redirect her or give her some extra attention, but it never seems to make much of a difference. Plus I am not home all day to keep an eye on her. I just don't understand what would make her do this to herself when there have been no other obvious changes in her routine, personality or behavior. I don't know what to do.

I would take her to a different vet for a second opinion. If you can get her to a feline specialist, all the better. Go to Hissy's site, Meowhoo.com, to this page:
http://www.meowhoo.com/Cat_Health/Ve...sts/index.html
And see if there are any specialists near you. If you can't find any there, post your location and we'll be able to give you more assistance.

Good luck with your Athena (great name, by the way!). Let us know what happens.

Thanks. I'm just really worried about her. I'm glad you like the name, We originally started off with two cats; Zeus & Athena (we were going on a Greek God theme because let's face it, they do think they are gods and they definitely get treated like it) Then about two years later our third cat found us and we named her Calliope (after the Greek muse, who was a daughter of Zeus). Since then we have taken in one of my father's cats after he died, Ramses. I know that is Egyptian not Greek, but Ramses is 17 years old, and after all ancient Egypt did come before ancient Greek and it does happen to fit with the God & Goddess theme.

We had this problem with my oldest cat when we brought home cat nr3. She licked all the fur of her tail and we took her to a vet and to a pet-behaviourlist (sp??). They only think we could do to brake the bad cycle was to put one of those cons (that is normally used after i.e surgery) on her to stop her from licking. Onces the fur grew back she had had enough time not licking the tail to brake the compulsive behaviour. HTH