is it possible the cat is rubbing its head on something inanimate? If it regular rubs somewhere, kinda obsessively, I suppose that could rub some fur off.

Dunno. This time it is Andi's cat we are psychoanalyzing. Or turning into a bat. It isn't clear just yet.

My cats just want to climb on the computer. Which might be for possible future electrolysis, I just don't know.

(note that I own no pets and no nuzzing about nuzzing)

Heh.

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Kristin, is there a 24-hr pharmacy you can call to ask if it would be a bad thing to take ibuprofen with the muscle relaxer? I know that vicodan is not quite the same thing, but I had to take ibuprofen with it in order to get real relief with the abcessed wisdom tooth.

Cass, is it possible the cat is rubbing its head on something inanimate? If it regular rubs somewhere, kinda obsessively, I suppose that could rub some fur off. (note that I own no pets and no nuzzing about nuzzing)

Spidra, that's a very reasonable question, especially since you can't see him or precisely where the hair loss is. My answer is that I have not seen him rubbing anything unusual, and also the pattern of hairloss is not in a spot that cats rub on a lot of stuff. The tips of his ears, say, the upper 60% of the triange-shape, are the bits missing the hair. If he were rubbing a lot, it would be more of the base, I think.

Come to think of it, his coat in general has lost some of the silky lustre it gained when I first started him on the Eukanuba prescription food. I'm still feeding him that, but Daniel says that in the last month or so it has changed color, so maybe they have changed the formula. We compared a label from a can from this summer (label kept near 'puter for research purposes) to one of the new cans, and it reads the same.

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Offers Cass some Guiness.

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is there a 24-hr pharmacy you can call to ask if it would be a bad thing to take ibuprofen with the muscle relaxer?

Rite-Aid was really helpful when my stepmom was worried about combining meds, from the same doctor but different pharmacies, for my grandma. Very nice too.

The tips of his ears, say, the upper 60% of the triange-shape, are the bits missing the hair. If he were rubbing a lot, it would be more of the base, I think.

Rubbing would be lower, I think. Though the loss of coat lustre makes me wonder about diet or stress being more of a culprit.

Kittenish's coat lost some of its rabbit-like quality when she was sick a while back - but when her spunk and appetite came back, so did the soft.

Offers Cass some Guiness.

Whoot!

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Doc said I could take up to 800 mg of ibuprophin, yes. I took 600 mg just now along with another half of the muscle relaxer. Here's hoping sleep follows.

Thanks everyone.

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Andi, Legion went through a phase where he lost all the fur off his front right leg. Once the fur started disappearing in a major way, he started licking the area a lot, but the hair loss preceded the itch.

I was pretty sure I'd given him mange, as I was volunteering at a dog shelter at the time, but treatments for mange had no effect. Ultimately the loss stopped and the fur grew back. The two leading theories are that it was stress-related or that he was subject to the same health issues that were making my and DH's hair fall out.

Several years later, he got hair loss on his flank. That turned out to be due to him sitting on a heating pad; once we removed the heating pad, it got better.

Thus: Is he pressing his ears into the heater or sleeping on his head a lot? Is he stressed about something?

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I have nothing to add about cat ears, although I think stress sounds likely. My parents once had a dog that licked part of her paw repeatedly until most of the hair fell out in that spot.

I have to finish taking down Christmas decorations today. The tree is almost empty, but now the boxes for everything are scattered around the house.

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I was pretty sure I'd given him mange

Cats don't get mange! I know from sad experience that would have been much, much sadder if the two cats living in the house had gotten the mange along with the 3 dogs and 3 people who got it. That was not a fun time.

eta not to say that cats can't get all other kinds of wonderfullness that can make them itchy and bald.

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I have no clue, but google indicates otherwise (sorta). It seems mange is rare in cats, but not unheard of, and some of the mites that cause mange are more of a problem for cats than others.

[link] [link] [link]

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here in Puerto Rico!! There are many palm trees and they had pine tree like decorations up. We arrived here on the 7th, right after 3 Kings Day.

We are in San Juan and it is beautiful. I like it here. I wish I could spend more time aways from the hotel but unfortunately, the work thing interferes with that. At least the hotel is half decent and has a lovely pool and mango margaritas.

Also feeling quite awful and unhealthy and ugly and fat. I wonder if some of that is being surrounded by many slender women in very skimpy bikinis, or the fact that I don't have my in-house affection stroking needs attended to or if it's just that I am unhealthy and overweight, but gotta get on reversing that.

From way back... If I left New England, I would most certainly be leaving my life as I know it. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but even moving up to Salem rocked my world pretty powerfully. I am exteremely provincial. Even the move up to the North Shore completes that circle; my mother was born in Salem.

I'd love to move to the west coast or to Europe but it would certainly be equivilant, to me, to starting over from scratch in every way, which I termed, as "giving up my life" here where I am. Sometimes that is appealing.

So that's where I came from on that.

Also, I am super cranky. I want to go home to my life because it sure as fuck ain't here. Also, fat and lonely. Also, practically no internet till I broke down and paid $4.95 for an hour of wireless. Also, shit. If it were sunnier out I'd cheer myself by lazing by the pool, but it's cloudy and raining here while it's 50 degrees at home.

Wow, I wasn't as upset when I *started* this post...

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