Thank you everyone. COTH never fails to bring in an array of perspectives. I’m thinking that I may be dealing with an intersection.
@MadTrotter We haven’t really dug through much honestly. I love my vet but he’s a little too laidback at times. He honestly just shrugged and took a “I wouldn’t stress too much” approach. Between the dog’s cancer, another cat with chronic herpes and ocular keratosis, and the random scary health scares with fosters, I get the feeling that he tries to keep me from stressing about the non emergency things?
Fostering - I can’t imagine that fostering is stress-free for any animal in my house but he has historically had the least outward display. Perhaps he was experiencing more stress than I realized and internalized it. We’d already decided to really slow down fostering so I may push that to an even longer timeline.
Environmental - The dog has horrific flea allergies and we keep everyone on flea preventative so I feel pretty confident it isn’t fleas. HOWEVER!!! It just clicked with me that the last few months have definitely been worse. All cats have 24/7 access to a screened in porch. Environmental allergies could absolutely be a contributor. It has been very very wet and hot this year so animals and humans alike have been struggling. While I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a total absence of grooming, I do think it was better in the winter. Today he went out after breakfast and essentially baked in 90+ degree weather for almost 10 hours only coming in for the litterbox and quick drinks.
Food - I feed nulo medal series grain-free turkey & chicken dry in the AM and Dave’s grain-free turkey wet PM. He’s been on it for roughly 3 years and is ~8 this year. He was eating Iams or something generic before he came to us and a few other brands with more ingredients over the years. He could have developed a protein allergy I guess? Outside of the actual cat food he does steal random bites of the dog’s grain-free venison food, dried beef liver, and raw vegetables but in small quantities sporadically. Purine Pro Plan Sensitive Skin seems to have more protein sources, soy, and corn, which seems potentially more triggering than the current options?
@OzarksRider we haven’t do a thyroid panel. That seems like something to consider. Eight feels young but animals don’t always follow our timelines. I wish I’d tracked the timeline better but I’d say over a year? it started off as a little thinning and slowly became a bald area and then a bald area that spread. I’d say it has definitely been worse in the past few months. Outside of the last 3 weeks we haven’t had fosters in the house since April maybe? Before that pair (who stayed solely in quarantine) it was a stable house since November 2022.
@Zevida interesting thought about pill pockets. The dog gets them daily for his meds so I can play around with whether he will consider eating one too.
@Chall interesting observations. Outside of his naked belly he’s got a super shiny pretty perfect coat with almost no shedding. Unless any of mine seek me out, I tend to let them live like little feral gremlins in the house lol. They can seek out a lap or a pet but if someone wants to pretend like humans don’t exist, they have complete freedom to just “be” in the household. The only exception is monthly toenail trimming but he gets held like a football by DH and limp noodle lets me do his toenails while purring so I don’t feel like it’s too offensive for him. He is pretty independent during the day but typically joins me for couch time and usually bed as well.
