How can I care for my cat’s skin at home?

It can be tricky because you can't readily bathe them, and it is very stressful for them. The best thing to do for cats with chronic skin and ear conditions is to identify the underlying cause, especially if it's recurring. Try to lower that itch level as much as possible and keep any secondary infection under control. Discuss it with your veterinarian and come up with a plan that makes sense. If you have a hard time applying anything to your cat skin, sending you home with a medicated shampoo, which we don't do very often, or even a medicated mousse that needs water to be applied, would be stressful for your cat. We won't ask you to do that regularly. We need to find a balance that works for what we want to accomplish. We have great products that help keep the skin barrier healthy and reduce itch levels. Some products even reduce bacteria and yeast populations. Supplemental therapy includes special diets that provide additional nutritional support for the immune system and skin health. I'm a big fan of diets that include omega fatty acids.

You can do regular ear-flushing if your cat has a history of ear infections. There are many options, but we have to have a holistic approach. By that I mean that if you can't clean your cat's ears at home because they don't tolerate it, we need to find a different way or find an approach that gets your cat acclimated. At Summer Creek Animal Clinic, we have a trainer who is also a veterinary technician who provides cooperative care services. With these services, we help you get to a place where you can provide regular care by getting your cat acclimated to having their ears cleaned, taking a bath, or getting brushed. It's best to have these discussions with your veterinarian to come up with a plan that's logistically feasible for you.

The big thing is trying to keep the cat groomed, keeping them combed out, keeping them from getting matted, and then looking for lumps and bumps. It's the perfect opportunity to look for lumps and bumps as you're keeping your cat groomed. If you can bathe your cat, good for you. That's great. I have an almost 18-year-old cat. I've never bathed him and probably never will at this point. Cats tend to groom so well that they really don't need bathing nearly as much as dogs.

Let's talk about the origins of some of the problems. Let's talk about flea allergies because that is such a common problem in cats. These are the cats who are ripping their hair out. They've got sores in the front and the back of their neck all the way to their tail and sometimes on their belly. Get them on an appropriate flea product. Food allergies are easy to manage too. First, we have to see the cat to get a better sense of where a cat is ripping his hair out on the body. Not exclusively, but typically if I see a cat coming in that's ripping the hair out around its face, the temples, the neck, and around the ears, I'm always going to think of food allergies.

We'd have that discussion about what foods are most likely to cause allergies in cats. Quite simply, that would be beef, fish, and dairy. Those are the big three. We'd look at the diet. We'd obviously want to change to a different diet. Usually, it's an ingredient issue and not a brand issue. If we're dealing with a ringworm situation, we will discuss how to address or treat ringworm and be on the lookout for ringworm showing up on us or other pets. If we're dealing with cancer, we'd have to address and see what type of cancer it is. That's going to indicate how we can address it long-term.