feline pattern baldness
Oh dear. Edna has never liked wearing collars. When a collar was first put on her, when she lived with her previous owner, she apparently scratched at it so much that within days she'd pulled a tuft of fur out, and had to be decollared. Since she's lived here, she's noticeably scratched at her collars far more than Branwell does, though without having done herself any damage (till now), and twice while out gallivanting has managed to slip collars altogether. Whether that's been by sheer persistence - her continual scratching away at her collar enables her to gradually loosen it, which I've had to keep an eye on - or by getting it caught on something, I dunno, but since the opening of my catflap is operated by a magnetic 'key' attached to the cats' collars, when Edna slips a collar she effectively locks herself out, as well as rendering herself unidentifiable for the duration of her collarless wandering.
I finally had her microchipped last month, having had to delay it for a while due to uncertainty about whether she'd be living with me longterm, as well as uncertainty as to whether my address would change, which means she's now EDNATRON!! and can make scanners beep when they pass over her, like a barcoded box of cornflakes at the supermarket checkout. More importantly, it means that, collar or not, should she stray and end up in a vet's surgery, she can be identified as belonging to me. I still think it's important to keep a collar on her, though. Magnetic collar key aside, a visible ID tag is still the simplest way for folks to know with whom a cat lives. Not everyone knows about microchips, and would realise that an uncollared animal could nevertheless be identified if taken to a vet. And it's much less faff for the average good Samaritan to phone a number on a tag, or pay a visit to an address given there, and get straight through to a stray animal's owner, than it is for them to have to locate a nearby veterinary practice in order to check out whether an animal's chipped, and potentially have to look after the critter themself in the meantime. Even just having an animal's name displayed on an ID tag can make a passerby more inclined to 'make a connection' with it and to look out for it, if they find it stray, rather than dismissing it as a feral animal with no owners worrying about their missing pet, as they might should they find it collarless. For Edna, particularly, whose darkness renders her nigh on invisible when the sun's gone down, a reflective collar has also been a reassurance that drivers will be more likely to spot her at nighttime.
Er, anyway, enough of my justification for having my cats microchipped AND collared, and onto the point. Evidently Edna now sees NO justification for remaining collared, and has been scratching at the hated article with renewed vigour, as this was what she looked like when I took it off a week ago:
Oh, Edna! :-(
I feel awful about the fact that I failed to notice she'd rubbed so much fur out until it'd got this bad. When I took the collar off, it was so dazzlingly obvious; her skin is so pale beneath her black fur that the contrast is even more stark. But truly, the fact that the fur had been rubbed off beneath the collar was completely concealed by the collar covering it, until that small bald patch a little further down her back (over her withers, were she a horse) appeared (as shown in the second photo). Whether she scratched that out while worrying at the collar, or if it got yanked out completely coincidentally in a fight or something, I don't know, but I took her collar off to get a closer look at it, and discovered her poor bald neck, and was horrified.
The skin was very slightly broken in one place, so I applied antiseptic, but touching her on the bald area doesn't seem to hurt or bother her at all, and since the cause of the baldness was blindingly obvious, I thought that there would be no point going to the vet about it unless removing the cause (that hateful collar!) failed to help things. So she's been happily pawloose and collar-free for the past week, the broken skin has healed over and shown no sign of any infection, and the fur seems to be growing back well. I'm still worried about the area, though. Healing skin and regrowing hair can be very itchy, and should she scratch her neck now, there's not even a collar to shield her skin from her claws. Fret fret. I'm keeping a close eye on it, of course, and will get her to the vet should anything dubious arise.
I'm worried about letting her outside without a collar, too: after keeping her inside for the first two days of collarlessness, when the broken skin still looked tender, I've since taken the magnetic strip off the catflap and let her go back outside again. Her cabin fever was mounting to a point where it felt cruel to keep inside and potentially stress her out (after all, one of the commonest responses to stress in animals is pull or pluck out fur or feathers, so it could just have exacerbated things). She can come and go without needing a magnetic collar key, but it still means she's roaming outside with no ID and no helpful reflective hi-vis clothing. She is microchipped now, but that was only done barely a month ago, and I haven't yet had the paperwork delivered to me, so I don't feel too secure about the security of that.
Probably the worry is disproportionate and mostly to do with my own guilt about failing to notice the silly mitten's depilatory activity till it got so extreme. I feel like such a BAD CATMOTHER :-( I do cwtch and cuddle and cosset her aplenty every day, honest, her baldness was just well concealed... Even without her collar on, it's possible not to notice it unless her neck is turned or craned at certain angles. Look!
Yeah, alright, in the second one you can't even see her neck anyway, I know. But she looks cute, so. Oh my little black cat, I love her so. Looks like she'll remain a minicat forever, as she's around 16 months old by now, and the vet last month said it was unlikely that she'd grow anymore (unless it be fatter), and that she was naturally a small and slender puss. There's certainly a lot less of her to lug to the vet's in a cat basket than there is of Bran, I can tell ya! :-p
I finally had her microchipped last month, having had to delay it for a while due to uncertainty about whether she'd be living with me longterm, as well as uncertainty as to whether my address would change, which means she's now EDNATRON!! and can make scanners beep when they pass over her, like a barcoded box of cornflakes at the supermarket checkout. More importantly, it means that, collar or not, should she stray and end up in a vet's surgery, she can be identified as belonging to me. I still think it's important to keep a collar on her, though. Magnetic collar key aside, a visible ID tag is still the simplest way for folks to know with whom a cat lives. Not everyone knows about microchips, and would realise that an uncollared animal could nevertheless be identified if taken to a vet. And it's much less faff for the average good Samaritan to phone a number on a tag, or pay a visit to an address given there, and get straight through to a stray animal's owner, than it is for them to have to locate a nearby veterinary practice in order to check out whether an animal's chipped, and potentially have to look after the critter themself in the meantime. Even just having an animal's name displayed on an ID tag can make a passerby more inclined to 'make a connection' with it and to look out for it, if they find it stray, rather than dismissing it as a feral animal with no owners worrying about their missing pet, as they might should they find it collarless. For Edna, particularly, whose darkness renders her nigh on invisible when the sun's gone down, a reflective collar has also been a reassurance that drivers will be more likely to spot her at nighttime.
Er, anyway, enough of my justification for having my cats microchipped AND collared, and onto the point. Evidently Edna now sees NO justification for remaining collared, and has been scratching at the hated article with renewed vigour, as this was what she looked like when I took it off a week ago:
Oh, Edna! :-(
I feel awful about the fact that I failed to notice she'd rubbed so much fur out until it'd got this bad. When I took the collar off, it was so dazzlingly obvious; her skin is so pale beneath her black fur that the contrast is even more stark. But truly, the fact that the fur had been rubbed off beneath the collar was completely concealed by the collar covering it, until that small bald patch a little further down her back (over her withers, were she a horse) appeared (as shown in the second photo). Whether she scratched that out while worrying at the collar, or if it got yanked out completely coincidentally in a fight or something, I don't know, but I took her collar off to get a closer look at it, and discovered her poor bald neck, and was horrified.
The skin was very slightly broken in one place, so I applied antiseptic, but touching her on the bald area doesn't seem to hurt or bother her at all, and since the cause of the baldness was blindingly obvious, I thought that there would be no point going to the vet about it unless removing the cause (that hateful collar!) failed to help things. So she's been happily pawloose and collar-free for the past week, the broken skin has healed over and shown no sign of any infection, and the fur seems to be growing back well. I'm still worried about the area, though. Healing skin and regrowing hair can be very itchy, and should she scratch her neck now, there's not even a collar to shield her skin from her claws. Fret fret. I'm keeping a close eye on it, of course, and will get her to the vet should anything dubious arise.
I'm worried about letting her outside without a collar, too: after keeping her inside for the first two days of collarlessness, when the broken skin still looked tender, I've since taken the magnetic strip off the catflap and let her go back outside again. Her cabin fever was mounting to a point where it felt cruel to keep inside and potentially stress her out (after all, one of the commonest responses to stress in animals is pull or pluck out fur or feathers, so it could just have exacerbated things). She can come and go without needing a magnetic collar key, but it still means she's roaming outside with no ID and no helpful reflective hi-vis clothing. She is microchipped now, but that was only done barely a month ago, and I haven't yet had the paperwork delivered to me, so I don't feel too secure about the security of that.
Probably the worry is disproportionate and mostly to do with my own guilt about failing to notice the silly mitten's depilatory activity till it got so extreme. I feel like such a BAD CATMOTHER :-( I do cwtch and cuddle and cosset her aplenty every day, honest, her baldness was just well concealed... Even without her collar on, it's possible not to notice it unless her neck is turned or craned at certain angles. Look!
Yeah, alright, in the second one you can't even see her neck anyway, I know. But she looks cute, so. Oh my little black cat, I love her so. Looks like she'll remain a minicat forever, as she's around 16 months old by now, and the vet last month said it was unlikely that she'd grow anymore (unless it be fatter), and that she was naturally a small and slender puss. There's certainly a lot less of her to lug to the vet's in a cat basket than there is of Bran, I can tell ya! :-p