Overgroomers Not-So Anonymoys

[otto]

Thanks for the update on Jennie's pal Ossi. Jennie seems to be getting worse. She just went through a course of her animax, a couple of weeks ago, and she is already getting another sore spot.

I am looking deep inside myself to think if perhaps she is being neglected a little.

All the cats get plenty of play, grooming and lovey time with me, but before I do anything else I am going to make a conscious effort to give her more one on one attention.

Whether she likes it or not.

 

[ldg]

I just wrote a really long response and lost it! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Long and short of it was.... Tuxie's situation is completely different. He had severe anemia, and his bone marrow had essentially stopped producing red & white blood cells. We had to give him a blood transfusion so he could undergo the surgery to have a bone marrow aspiration to find out if his bone marrow was capable of producing them. It was, so he went on meds to stimulate his bone marrow into producing red & white blood cells. The steroids were to suppress his immune system to prevent his body from destroying them.

He was initially on prednisone (pill) and it stopped working. Our vet consulted with the top cat blood expert in the country, and she recommended depomedrol. Thankfully, it worked when the pred stopped. It has a slightly different mechanism of action, though is essentially the same drug.

So he needed shots every two weeks for quite some time. Then every three weeks, then every month, then every six weeks, &etc. This went on from some time in 2004 to now. His last shot of depo was about this time last year, I think.

We're due to take him in for blood work again in November - but he's running around here looking really pink, so hopefully his numbers still look really good.

When in "normal" range bloodwork-wise, when he gets the depo shot, he definitely gets VERY active for a few days. He tends to be aggressive anyway, so we have to play with him a LOT or he'll take all that energy out on the other cats.

He also gets really hungry - but that's a good thing, because he needed to gain weight. He's good now - so we don't feed him extra when he gets a shot now. But he calms down again after 5 days - a week or so.

I know others have had bad experiences with it, but I don't remember what they were. You may want to search in the health forum for "depo" or "depomedrol".

There may be other steroids that are given via injection. I just know depomedrol is a long-acting steroid given by injection.

The problem is if Ossi has a weak immune system, the steroids suppress it further. You may want to talk to your vet about how to proceed. Short courses of steroids when he has a flare-up may be best - you may also want to talk about an antioxident kind of vitamin to help boost his immune system. If he goes back to having insane itchies - maybe try allergy meds (we're using cetirizine because it's not bitter like benadryl - it's a newer generation antihistamine. The brand name of cetirizine is zyrtec - both the brand and the generic are available OTC now). Our vet has Chumley on 1/2 pill of cetirizine 2x a day (one pill in 24 hours is a human dose equivalent).

 

[bastetservant]

I had a cat (who lived to be about 18 or 19 - can't remember now) who over-groomed her belly. She loved turkey cat food, and actual pieces of turkey, too, of course. I used to joke that if I ever won the lottery (it was new then and I did buy tickets then), I'd buy her whatever she wanted - which was probably a turkey all her own as big as her (about 8 pounds).

I can't remember how it happened, but eventually I figured out that she was ALLERGIC to turkey. I stopped giving any to her, and the over-grooming stopped and she never did it again.

Poor thing never got her favorite food again.

Anyway, I thought I'd pass that on, for what it's worth.


Robin

 

[piikki]

It's time for another update for anyone who has followed this saga since Ossi's course of steroids ended on 28th of Nov.

To back track a bit just before Ossi's steroids were pulled, we were away for little over two weeks. This is always very stressful for Ossi and his brothers. He stays home and this time we had two pet sitters come daily (our usual one and a paid one) because we had not been away for so long for awhile, and knew it would be extra hard. We also had Feliways puttering away etc to try to make it less stressful.

When we left Ossi's Pink Belly status was very good. He had good hair growing all over the overgroomed area. When we came back it was obvious he had been 'shaving'. However, he had not managed to shave any area down to skin. On some spots he had gone pretty close to pink but overall I was surprised to see how well he had done with 'the nervous' part of his licking. Still substantial - but again he had been able to stop mutilating himself. Pet sitter did not report much hair pukes either, so he had probably licked steadily, not all of it in one go.

Then came the time to drop the pills. Couple of first days went Ok, and then on 4th day I see he is licking a paw, licking neck, lickety-licking the belly. Increasing amounts of touch this and touch that a bit. It's amazing how big a difference it is when there is a break, and it looks like it's way more than before. Like usual before meals he gets into his usual pattern of vigorous licking, like he is trying to lick the hunger out of his belly.

I decide to follow him carefully but next morning we wake up and his upper belly is raw and scabbing over!! ARGHHH! Too late! So, I called the vet's office and wanted to ask whether we should consider allergy shot vs going back on the meds. They told me just to come and get more of the pills since he is doing well on them. I did that as I wanted him back on something for now. I want to re-evaluate this soon (most likely with another vet) because Ossi is heading for oral surgery, and I want to know if there are any complications for him being on steroids with that coming up.

So anyway, our little head case licky-looloo is definitely benefiting from the steroids. We now need to find a long-term solution that will work. He has no problem taking the pill but I want to make sure it's safe and/or if he has an allergy what that might be.