Unfortunately my cat Seth had another peculiar thing happen to him and I'm trying to establish what could've caused the weird, injury to the skin on his head to perhaps prevent it happening in future.
Let me tell you a little background information first assuming you haven't seen or remember my previous threads. I live in a middle of nowhere with only few people in the area. Getting to the vet is a major trip so we do most of the stuff ourselves. I had a slight problem with a neighbor setting a trap some time ago, but I know for a fact he isn't doing that now (also both my neighbors are away at the moment).
Seth is a few year old neutered male, about 6kg,he was always very tame, but since few months ago he started fighting stray cats that sometimes come here. This resulted in a visit to the vet three weeks ago when he got an infection after another cat bit the inside of his front paw. This has healed since after a course of antibiotics.
Coming back to the point of this thread. Seth hasn't came back to eat in the morning, he is usually quite regular, but occasionally he comes in late so I wasn't that concerned. Few hours have passed I got a bit worried so I went around my place calling him (he usually comes). About 15 min later he came. I immediately saw he is acting weird/is perhaps injured, he was very stressed, crawling more than walking when I approached him. I assumed he fought other cats again so on the advice of my vet I started checking him out to cut the fur around any injuries and to wash/disinfect them when I found this (which definitely wasn't there yesterday) on his head! (picture below)
It looks very atypical, like some sort of long term abrasion. Like he was rubbing his head for a long time. It definitely doesn't look like a traumatic injury to me (based on a rather limited number of other traumatic injuries I saw, perhaps someone with better knowledge will correct me on this? ). There is no bruising, the fur and the topmost layer of skin is removed, but the skin under doesn't appear damaged.
This is how it looks like. When his skin isn't in tension you can't see it because his skin folds hiding it, that's why he is being held like this
Also he has a number of smaller injuries consistent with fighting with other cats plus a broken rear claw.
Have you ever seen something like this on your cat? What caused it? My first "guess" was he got locked in a building and rubbed his head trying to open the door until he was eventually released, but there are no people around here other than us (as mentioned neighbours are away). So I have no idea. If he was bitten by an animal (we only have wolves and very rarely a stray dog around here) this would be much worse. Likewise about being hit by a man I think. What do you think?
Let me tell you a little background information first assuming you haven't seen or remember my previous threads. I live in a middle of nowhere with only few people in the area. Getting to the vet is a major trip so we do most of the stuff ourselves. I had a slight problem with a neighbor setting a trap some time ago, but I know for a fact he isn't doing that now (also both my neighbors are away at the moment).
Seth is a few year old neutered male, about 6kg,he was always very tame, but since few months ago he started fighting stray cats that sometimes come here. This resulted in a visit to the vet three weeks ago when he got an infection after another cat bit the inside of his front paw. This has healed since after a course of antibiotics.
Coming back to the point of this thread. Seth hasn't came back to eat in the morning, he is usually quite regular, but occasionally he comes in late so I wasn't that concerned. Few hours have passed I got a bit worried so I went around my place calling him (he usually comes). About 15 min later he came. I immediately saw he is acting weird/is perhaps injured, he was very stressed, crawling more than walking when I approached him. I assumed he fought other cats again so on the advice of my vet I started checking him out to cut the fur around any injuries and to wash/disinfect them when I found this (which definitely wasn't there yesterday) on his head! (picture below)
It looks very atypical, like some sort of long term abrasion. Like he was rubbing his head for a long time. It definitely doesn't look like a traumatic injury to me (based on a rather limited number of other traumatic injuries I saw, perhaps someone with better knowledge will correct me on this? ). There is no bruising, the fur and the topmost layer of skin is removed, but the skin under doesn't appear damaged.
This is how it looks like. When his skin isn't in tension you can't see it because his skin folds hiding it, that's why he is being held like this
Also he has a number of smaller injuries consistent with fighting with other cats plus a broken rear claw.
Have you ever seen something like this on your cat? What caused it? My first "guess" was he got locked in a building and rubbed his head trying to open the door until he was eventually released, but there are no people around here other than us (as mentioned neighbours are away). So I have no idea. If he was bitten by an animal (we only have wolves and very rarely a stray dog around here) this would be much worse. Likewise about being hit by a man I think. What do you think?
