Elizabeth
Montreal, QC, Canada

Based upon your very brief description, I suspect your cat is suffering from psychogenic alopecia, or feline trichotillomania. Many experts believe that the syndrome is related to obsessive compulsive disorder in people.

Cats with psychogenic alopecia groom themselves excessively. This leads to bald patches on the skin. The overgrooming may occur in response to stress, boredom, or mild allergic stimulation from fleas or other allergens. The bald patches most often start on the abdomen and then spread to the rear aspects of the thighs, then up the back from the base of the tail.

Any person who suspects her cat is suffering from psychogenic alopecia should see a vet to confirm the diagnosis and rule out medical causes of hair loss such as severe allergies, parasite infestation, and autoimmune disease.

Cats with psychogenic alopecia may benefit from a stable home environment and increased enrichment (this can be accomplished through training, increased activity, and altered feeding tactics). In some cases medications such as antidepressants and rarely estrogen analogues are prescribed to reduce symptoms. In general I do not recommend medicating cats with psychogenic alopecia (I especially recommend against estrogen analogues). Psychogenic alopecia is a cosmetic problem, and I generally feel that it does not warrant systemic medication.

Photo: psychogenic alopecia may start out as a bald patch on the abdomen.

A
Canada

Based upon your description, the lump most likely is benign. Reactions to fleas, food, or environmental allergens can lead to scabby lumps like the one you describe. Cysts, benign tumors, and small areas of infections also may cause small pimple-like growths anywhere on the body.

However, you caught my attention by mentioning the mass is on a hind leg. Rabies and leukemia vaccines are administered in the rear legs, and these vaccines have been linked in rare instances to aggressive tumors called sarcomas. These so-called vaccine associated sarcomas usually appear as firm masses that develop under the skin. They generally do not cause redness or scabbing of the overlying skin. In other words, the lump on your cat’s leg does not sound like a sarcoma.

However, sarcomas are serious. I always recommend vet checkups for cats with masses in spots where vaccines are administered (the rear legs or in between the shoulders). Your cat is no exception. Your vet should be able to determine whether there is any cause for concern.

Karen
Georgia

When Revolution was released ten or twelve years ago, it looked set to revolutionize (Heh! Get it?) parasite prevention in pets. It was billed as a once monthly topical preventative for heartworm, roundworm, and several other parasites.

But Revolution appears to suffer from being a jack of all trades and a master of none. Most dermatologists I know feel that it is of only middling effectiveness against fleas.

And more seriously, dogs’ skin appears to be relatively impervious to the active ingredient in Revolution. Many experts have questioned the efficacy of the product as a heartworm preventative in dogs. (Cats do appear to absorb the product, and therefore most experts believe that Revolution works well as a heartworm preventative in cats.)

When it comes to heartworm prevention, Revolution is probably better than nothing. But if your dog won’t take oral Heartgard or Interceptor, you may want to consider switching to Advantage Multi. It is a topical product that appears to be very effective against heartworm.

Even in the suburbs, the dog’s unleashed, unfenced, carefree outdoor life is largely at an end. The dogs are in the house, even in the bed. (The doghouse is now mostly for husbands.) There are no rules to this evolving, increasingly intimate arrangement, and it can give rise to a kind of canine identity crisis. Outside of its country context, the dog plays an ever more human role. Which can make things very confusing. “We’ve seen a linear explosion in pet populations in Western countries over the past 40 years,” Serpell tells me, and notes a correlation with the depressing statistics in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. “People are living more isolated lives, are having fewer children, their marriages aren’t lasting. All these things sort of break down a social network and happen to exactly coincide with the growth in pet populations. I think that what’s happening is simply that we’re allowing animals to fill the gap in our lives.”

To learn about the ramifications this has on us–and our canine companions–read the whole article.

Hawk stuck in car’s grille returned to the wild

DAVIS, CA- A hawk that was hit and stuck in a car’s front grille earlier this month has been nursed back to health and released into the wild.

The driver who hit the hawk, Brian Hanley, was given the honor of releasing the bird Wednesday morning.

The young red-tailed hawk was struck by Hanley’s car on a Yolo County road on Jan. 6, according to UC Davis environmental sciences spokeswoman Sylvia Wright.

When Hanley realized what happened, he immediately went to the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine with the hawk still in the grille of the car.

Once he arrived at the school he found John Madigan, who is a horse veterinarian and associate director of the university’s veterinary teaching hospital.

As it turns out, Hanley was lucky in finding Madigan. Wright says that Madigan is an authority on animal rescue and leads the school’s Veterinary Emergency Response Team.

Madigan was quickly able to gather staff from the Avian and Exotic Pet Service and two other veterinary teachers to help extract the bird’s head and talons from the car.

Wright said the team first removed the grille of the car and then safely rescued the hawk.

The hawk was found not to have any broken bones and only a chest injury that surgeons were able to repair the next day.

The bird, identified as a juvenile red-tailed hawk, could have been released earlier, but raptor center experts waited for the stormy weather to pass.

Photo: LTShears

From an article in the January 21, 2010 Economist.

As the number of job losses and foreclosures has mounted over the past two years, some people have chosen to surrender their animals, unable to afford pet food let alone veterinary care. Many have brought their dogs and cats to shelters. Some have been less kind, chaining them to fences or locking them inside their foreclosed homes. One kitten was even left in a mailbox in Boston.

Looking after these pets is becoming more challenging because many shelters rely on government money and have seen their funding cut. Animal Care and Control of New York City, for example, saw its grant fall by over $750,000 this fiscal year, around 7% of its operating budget. Fewer people are coming forward to make donations.

The article goes on to point out there are some silver linings on the clouds. As with many other times of hardship, resourceful people are working on clever ways to address the problem.

Some non-profits are trying to step in and encourage people not to abandon their furry friends at shelters in the first place. Pet-food banks, which give pet food to people in need, have sprung up across the country.

One non-profit organisation, Pilots ’N Paws, connects pilots to shelters with dogs that have not found homes. The pilots volunteer to fly them to other states, giving them a second chance at adoption.

The internet is playing its part. One organisation, ForeclosurePets.org, runs an online billboard that allows people facing foreclosure to find a home for their pet. Adopt-a-pet.com uses its website to help shelters advertise and send e-mail alerts when certain types of animals come in. By the end of 2009 8,500 animal shelters were using the site to post adoption listings for 140,000 pets, up from 6,800 shelters and 98,000 listings at the beginning of the year. Now all that is needed is 140,000 good homes.

Mrs. Kitty
Pittsburgh, PA

Opponents of commercial diets can make valid arguments about quality control (as exemplified by the 971 entries to date on the FDA’s pet food recall database), companies’ profit seeking behavior, and even about the biological appropriateness of some commercial foods. But one argument I am very confident can not be made is that pet food is produced from euthanized pets.

First and foremost, any small animal practitioner who would sell his former patients to a food company would be a soulless monster. Fortunately there aren’t too many soulless monster vets around. It is extremely hard to get into vet school. This tends to push the soulless monsters to become CEOs of big banks instead.

Also, remember that very few pets die naturally at the vet’s office. Most are humanely euthanized to end their suffering. Euthanasia solution is, of course, toxic. And it is present throughout any pet that has been euthanized. It is illegal to use animals that contain euthanasia solution as a food source not just in some states. It’s illegal in every state.

Unless you see in the news that your family vet has been disgraced, lost his veterinary license, and is on his way to prison it is safe to say that your pet’s remains have not been sold to a pet food company.

The consumer world is full of product recalls. Infant cribs, venetian blinds and some Toyotas have been recalled recently. And who can forget the recent recalls of spinach, peanuts, and beef?

Naturally, for concerned pet owners pet food recalls are very important–or at least they have become very important since the mother of all pet food recalls a few years ago. But keeping track of pet food recalls can be difficult and complicated. Simply put, there have been too many of them to remember.

Enter the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has launched a new, searchable database that includes 971 recalls since January 1, 2006. (The database only goes back four years. If you have pet food from before then, I urge you to throw it away now for reasons completely unrelated to recalls!)

The number 971 sounds quite scary indeed. If you’re thinking of circumventing this problem by making your pet’s food, remember that recalls of human food are stunningly common as well. (Remember the beef recall mentioned above? Beef is a common ingredient in home-made pet food.) Fortunately, the FDA has a database for human food recalls as well.

Click here for the FDA pet food recall database.
Click here for the FDA human food recall database.

Jenny

Feline immunodeficiency virus, or FIV, is very similar to the virus that causes human AIDS. There is no evidence that FIV poses a health risk to humans.

Cats with FIV suffer from immune system compromise. A weakened immune system predisposes cats to opportunistic viral and bacterial infections.

Jenny, you make a good point about injecting viruses into a cat with a weak immune system. Some vaccines are made from attenuated (modified) live pathogens. The organisms in these vaccines can in rare instances revert to a pathological state. This so-called reversion to virulence may be more likely in an immunocompromised individual.

However, I would not recommend foregoing vaccines altogether. Although the virus will some day affect your kitten’s immune system, for many years he may respond normally and benefit normally from vaccination. Also, remember that a weak immune system needs all the help it can get. Vaccines are designed to help the immune system organize and prepare for exposure to disease.

To my knowledge no group of specialists has issued specific vaccine guidelines for cats with FIV (if any reader knows otherwise and has a link to such guidelines, please post it in the comments section). In the absence of guidelines, I would recommend the following steps.

Marty
San Rafael, CA

About half of the cat questions I receive boil down to “why is my cat urinating inappropriately in the house?” This phenomenon is a long standing problem for me. Cat people write very few questions to the Vet Blog. When I finally do come across a feline-oriented question, it has a 50-50 chance of being the question above (which, by the way, I have answered many times since I started writing this blog).

Although dog owners don’t ask this question as routinely as cat people, some version of the question shows up in my inbox at least five times a month. There is a common secondary feature to the dog questions, too. Dog owners always point out that their dog “doesn’t seem to realize that she’s urinating in the house.”

The answer, Marty, is that there is a common medical condition that causes four-year-old female dogs display the symptoms you have described. It is called hormone responsive urinary incontinence. It is treatable with a medication called PPA. It is a common problem. So common, in fact, that I wrote web pages dedicated to the problem and its treatment. Click the links and read away!

There are other causes of canine house soiling. Read all about them here.

The long and short of it is that your dog should be tested for a variety of diseases. However, if she is like most dogs, the condition will be treatable.

Special note for cat people: for information on feline house soiling, click here.