My cat is licking the fur off her belly

Question
I have an 8 yr old tabby who has been healthy, but recently she has been licking her belly so much that she is loosing fur. The furless area has now spread to the inside of her legs. The skin in the area appears to be fine and she has been acting completely normal (other than the licking). I took her to the vet and the ruled out flees or skin conditions. They gave her medicine that had no effect on her at all. I tried "No Scratch" on the area and it had no effect on her at all. I realized that she started licking when my husband had her boarded over a vacation. Is there anyway of knowing this is a behavioral thing or an allergy or something else? If it's behavioral can I put a cone on her for a while to try and break the habit?

Thanks,
Megan

Answer
Megan,

Your kitty may have contracted a skin condition called mange, so you may want to have your vet do a skin scraping just to rule that out, because although not very common in cats if that is the issue the sooner it is treated the better. The other common health issue that could be responsible for hair loss is her thyroid which means that the vet will have to do a simple blood test to be able to rule that out or confirm it. She potentially could have developed a food allergy, you could try changing her food to something that has a unique single protein source, and is grain free. Those foods tend to be fairly expensive and you should be aware that if you are looking at a food allergy it could take several weeks or even a couple of months for the improvement to show as cats take awhile to get the allergens completely out of their systems. Your last most common option is that this is behavioral or "psychogenic alopecia". This can be extremely hard to correct. Your vet may try medications to alter her behavior, but in reality this can sometimes be a life long issue. The problems with kitty wearing a cone for extended periods of time are things like not being able to adequately clean herself, not being able to get into covered litterboxes or even eat and drink properly. I would suggest that you make another visit to the vet with this information in mind and see if it is something easily treatable and go from there. Hopefully that helps. If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me again.