The Cat’s latest dx: Self-trauma

Coolidge is back in harness, or at least in his Surgi-Sox body stocking until Friday. The sleek, tubular garment fits over his head and through his forelegs and over his belly, and protects the four stitches cinching up his biopsy incision. Without it, he would remove the sutures prematurely himself.

This is a Cat who has racked up no small number of diagnoses over his ten years. A broken hock, IBD, hepatic lipidosis, and diabetes mark his heroic life and have sustained a few veterinary careers. So when a smooth, white bald spot showed up on his shoulder a few months ago, I was concerned. His hair eventually grew back over it. Then it returned. No bite marks, no scaling: just a smooth bald patch.

I took him to the vet last week, and she agreed that his propensity for the unusual warranted a biopsy, although the patch didn’t appear to be anything really sinister. The dermatopathologist’s report concurred: there could be some allergy or inflammation process going on, but the most likely etiologic agent of the ominous white spot is “self-trauma.” This means he licks his hair off that spot. Maybe just because he likes to, maybe because it’s irritated, but he seems to be his own agent of feline white spot baldness.

He is bald; yet he is clean. Leviticus 13:40