Unfortunately, that's not a question that can be easily answered without seeing the pet. When it's itchy and where it's itchy, both matter, and there are many things that cause itchiness. We really need to see the cat to kind of hone down and figure out why it's truly itching because most skin conditions and cats cause itchiness.

Dermatitis is a general term that means the skin's inflamed. There are many things that cause inflammation, including the things we just talked about, infections, abscesses, ticks, fleas, all parasites, and allergies, those types of things. We see a fair amount of food allergies with cats that we have to deal with. We can definitely see some pollen atopy allergy issues with cats as well. A fungus, like ringworm, which is not a parasite, can also cause skin issues. It's a fungus that affects the skin and can cause hair loss and, unfortunately, can be given to you. We see bacterial infections on the skin as well. We have mentioned fleas already because they're such a common issue for us.

We commonly see parasites in cats. Fleas are always a concern with cats. We also sometimes even will see ticks with cats. We see skin infections, fungal infections, and bacterial infections. Cats get abscesses very frequently. Food allergies are a problem with cats. There's a syndrome called an eosinophilic granuloma and eosinophilic plaque in cats. So there are lots of different things that we see with cats.

There are. One of the big things is keeping your cat nice and lean. How about that? Most people didn't think this was going to be a fat talk. Cats are great groomers, as long as they can reach the spots to groom. If they groom, they tend to keep their skin nice and healthy. But when they get overweight, the hair, especially down the back, over their tailhead, they can't reach it. And if they can't reach it, it builds up and mats up, which leads to some really severe and nasty skin issues. Keeping your cat combed, if they'll allow it, would be great. Bathing cats, if your cat will allow it, it's fabulous. That's the rare cat who likes to have a bath, and I sure don't want you scratched or bitten trying to bathe your cat if they don't like it. Once again, cats are such good groomers that they don't need bathing as frequently as dogs. Also, keep fleas under control.

Anytime your cat comes in, we're going to perform a full physical exam to make sure the overall health of the cat's good. We're going to check it for fleas to make sure that we don't have any fleas. Fleas can be difficult to find in cats, and sometimes we'll treat for fleas, even if we don't find them because cats are such good groomers. They groom the fleas off quickly. Yet the itch remains. Many times, we will take a skin sample to test for infection or fungus and then work from there. We let those things lead us to where else we may need to go.

If you see some swelling or an abscess. I tell people that anytime there's a hair loss, or if there's inflammation or bleeding, we need to take a look at that. As long as it's anything more than just a minor irritation, we need to take a look at things and, again, get this thing under control pretty quickly. The other thing with cats is anytime you see a lump or bump, we need to see it sooner rather than later. Cats do get skin tumors, and, unfortunately, they tend to get bad skin tumors. So the sooner we deal with those, the better off they'll be.

Just like you or me, minor abrasion or cut irritation that we may clean up will heal on it. We don't have to see a doctor for that. A cat's immune system may help a minor skin infection, but anything much more than that needs to be seen because if we don't deal with it soon, then it becomes a bigger and bigger problem until we're dealing with a major problem that's much more difficult to get under control. I found that having had a lot of cats in my life, that one little claw that's punctured the skin can quickly become an abscess and get infected, and you don't know it until possibly the abscess is ruptured, and you're just shocked, or it gets really swollen and painful.