Hurting below the fluff – any season can be itchy for pets

Ryan brought young CC in to see us this week with one of his regular cat bite abscesses. CC seems like a placid feline, but he has a menacing presence about him, with his jet-black coat and heavy features, and quite rightly he takes protecting his territory seriously.

But I feel so sorry for his owner Ryan every time I see them, because by the time Ryan leaves the hospital, he has red eyes and is rubbing his face furiously. This is not because he has been crying, but because he is allergic to CC’S hair as well as all the other animal hair wafting around the hospital.

Allergies have been the theme for this week’s patients, which is quite unusual for this time of year.

Summer is the busiest time for us with all the itchy cats and dogs, but autumn and spring, especially the warmer ones, can be equally as busy with itchy fourlegged friends.

Raticus is normally a smoothcoated 3-year-old cat, with one of those awesome charcoal coats with the underlying silver colour. But when she emerged from the depths of her cardboard box, it was obvious what owner Charlotte had been concerned about. Almost all the fur along the top of Raticus’s back was missing, and what remained was just thin, brittle hair with a multitude of pinpoint, rough-feeling scabs all along her back.

Even the underside of Raticus was looking a bit bald. A full examination revealed nothing abnormal, and Charlotte had been using a good flea treatment on a monthly basis.

Every day this week we have seen similar problems in our cat patients. The scabby area along the back is called ‘‘miliary dermatitis’’, which just means ‘‘nodular skin inflammation’’.

The main causes, in order of importance, are flea bite allergy, inhalant allergy (eg pollen), and food allergy.

There are varying degrees of this disease, with some cats just having a bit of hair thinning or brittle hair on their back and some hair loss on their belly, to the more advanced form, called ‘‘eosinophilic complex’’. Eosinophils are a type of white blood cell involved in allergic responses.

The hair thinning is caused by the cats overgrooming themselves due to the itchiness. In the more advanced form, there can be one or a combination of the following, as well as the hair loss: raised red angry areas of skin on the inner legs, ulcers or erosions of the upper lips, and swelling of the point of the chin. The usual presentation is the cat with hair thinning on the back.

Treatment of a disease obviously depends on the cause, but with allergies it can be impossible to find that cause, and even if you do, you can’t do much about the cause.

So the first thing is to eliminate fleas as a cause. Even if you don’t see any fleas on them, cats are good groomers and can remove most of them well, making them difficult to find.

Choose an effective product, and treat all the pets – as well as the house if necessary – to make sure there are no fleas around.

If this has already been done, inhaled allergy is the next most likely cause. And this is definitely the case for Raticus.

We immediately started him on treatment to control the allergy. This can involve oral antiinflammatories, but long-term tablets can be difficult and dangerous in some cats.

So Raticus was given an injection of a long-acting antiinflammatory, which will last several weeks. After three days, Charlotte reported a vast improvement in Raticus’s behaviour, and the little scabs were disappearing from her back.

Dogs haven’t been exempt from skin problems lately. We have seen a large number of nasty skin ‘‘hot spots’’ in some of our canine friends. These need to be treated aggressively, including having the area clipped free of hair, along with antibiotics and antiinflammatories.

So, no new laser treatment or hair transplants, but there are a few simple things that we can do to get your friend’s furry coat back on track, ready for summer.