This girl, overall, is doing so much better since I discovered her collar was giving her fits and caused her skin to be inflamed and be bald. It shocked me! She no longer wears a collar and her fur has since grown back. She may have developed an allergy to something within the collar itself. Because of her, all my cats no longer wear collars.
7/21/14
I have also been giving her "baths" when she is extremely itchy around her face and ears. I use a homemade pet shampoo since the commercial ones can be harsh. It is a combination of Dawn dish soap (original), vinegar and water. We had a few struggles trying to figure out how to keep her calm and yet still wash her. The best method is to just simply hold her and have a bucket of water on hand with a wash rag. We have had to do this frequently in the beginning; but, now, we only have to do this when she gets a major attack of itches which is about once a month or so.
7/22/14
She is a much happier cat and hangs out all over the place now. She still prefers hard flat surfaces; but, will occasionally hang out on the chair with me.
She is such a gorgeous cat. I'm glad she is feeling better! She looks good!
ReplyDeleteWe just recently discovered that the food I have been giving Grace caused her to want to scratch her ears a lot. There was absolutely no black gunk in her ears at all. They looked pristine. My sister told me about her cat who had allergies that would make her scratch her ears. I decided to try a new food with Grace for 'sensitive stomachs' and she has completely stopped the ear scratching.
We originally tried sensitive stomach special food -- the kind only the vet prescribes -- for about six weeks to see if it made a difference. Nope. She still scratched viciously. It was then determined she has allergies from pollen and whatnot -- like my Dan. It is seasonal -- spring and fall. The bad thing is she is a zebra. Our original vet couldn't figure her out and I was getting frustrated because they kept going around and around and around. it wasn't mites, fleas and whatnot. They weren't trying other problems. And yet, they kept treating her like it was either mites or allergies. Steroid shots is NOT good for cats and Gracie got those a couple of times. It did help her immensely; but, the side effects worried me.
ReplyDeleteI finally searched for another vet which was at an animal hospital. They figured her out within two visits! They treated her for mites and what not and we took her back a week later. The vet was puzzled and took her back for further testing. It turns out she is a zebra and maybe only 1% of the cat population suffers from it. She gets bacterial/yeast infections in her ears and around her face and vet speculates it is caused by allergies. It would cost close to $1000 to do allergy testing and we decided to go the route of seeing if we can control it. They packed her ears with medicated wax which killed off the bacterial and from thereon, controlling ithe problem worked. We did have to go in every six months to get her ears treated again. But, since we moved out here, I decided to see if I could make her happy on my own. I was able to do that until this spring... I found Zymox Otic for her ears and since she had the itchies really bad this spring and summer, I resorted to giving her "baths", And, after the discovery of her collar and subsequent removal, She has been fairly happy.
You know she has to have nail caps on her hind feet. I feed her expensive grain/gluten free and sensitive stomach cat food simply because it is better for her/them. It hasn't been easy with this special needs cat because I want my cats to be happy and I hate seeing them miserable.