Chewed off ALL the hair on his tail!

[rogersjb]

Hello, and thank you so much in advance for any advice anyone has.

My youngest cat, Max used to have the most beautiful fluffy long haired tail you had ever seen.

Over the past few months, he has started chewing on it and now his tail is literally bald. Top to bottom he has chewed the hair completely off!

We have taken him to the vet here, and they can only guess it is stress. There is no apparent skin irritation at all.

I have two guesses:

1. He was bitten by a neighboring cat known to have HIV. We put our can on inter-feron (I think that is what it is called - I live in Japan and couldn't quite understand what the vet called it). We found out just today actually that our cat is HIV negative!! But the chewing seemed to have started during that inter-feron treatment.

2. He had a few weeks when he would get burs stuck on his tail a few weeks back, and perhaps from trying to chew them out he has started a new habbit of tail chewing?

Again, thanks in advance. I am at a loss as to what I can do for him.

[Traci]

See a new vet promptly. Ask the vet to do a skin scrape and/or culture to rule out flea allergy dermatitis, fungal disease, or mites, other skin afflictions. If the skin scrape/culture are negative, then opt for full bloodwork to rule out systemic problems. If he is older than 7, a thyroid panel should also be included.

If he's allowed outdoors, acclimate him strictly indoors ONLY, which will solve the bur problem. Burs can migrate deep into the skin which can cause severe infection.