What it is like

When we had adopted our cat Beanie, a shorthair orange tabby, he had some bare spots on his back and sides, close to the base of the tail. The fur on some of those spots was much shorter, as if recently shaved. Others were totally bare. I had noticed that at the pet shelter, and the shelter vet told me that it was Beanie’s reaction to stress: he had been chewing the hair off because he was being harassed by some other cats. The vet also said that Beanie’s brother who was adopted earlier used to have the same problem, but as soon as he settled in his new home he had stopped doing it.

We took Beanie home. He went through all the stages that an adult cat normally goes through while getting used to new owners: hiding, venturing out more and more, investigating the house, and finally feeling safe. He grew to trust us and had become a perfect pet, always happy to play or to cuddle or to be held. But his licking problem did not go away. In fact, it had gotten worse. The bare spots grew bigger, and now they were not just bare, they were raw, bloody. Beanie would lick, and lick, and lick, as if he did not know when to stop. “Don’t you feel it when it starts hurting?” I would ask. I could not understand it.

I had tried many things. When I saw Beanie lick himself I would try to distract him, to get his attention with toys. He always responded to that since he loved playing, he would immediately stop licking and go after the toy – only to get back to it later. My saying, “Beanie, stop!” had the same temporary effect. I worked from home, so I had the opportunity to watch him most of the time; but even with that advantage, I found it hard to keep up with him. Beanie always seemed to be able to find a moment when I was not looking, and of course he had all of the night to make sure his back and sides looked their ugliest.

Determining the cause

When several months had passed without any improvement, I saw that it was time to do some research. I went online, and soon knew the name of our problem: Compulsive Licking. I learned that it could be caused by several different things, namely fleas, skin irritation, allergy, stress, or inner pain. The first thing you do when your cat starts compulsively licking itself is make sure it has no fleas. The second thing to do is to go to the vet and check for allergies and possible illness.

Supposedly, in Beanie’s case it was stress-related, but I had begun to doubt that. He had been with us long enough by that time, and seemed perfectly adjusted and happy. My husband and I had no children and no other pets to harass him, so there were no stress factors of that kind. Also, from watching Beanie I knew that his licking was not a reaction to a stressful situation: he never did it when (or after) he was nervous or frightened. It was more like he did it when he had nothing else to do.

I went down the list and one by one ruled out the possible causes. Beanie had no fleas, no allergies, no skin irritation. He had a clean bill of health – except for his licking. The only conclusion I could come to was that his problem, although it could have been triggered by any of the above mentioned things, was now simply a bad habit.

I want to emphasize this once more, since during my Internet research I found no reference to such a possibility: even when the original cause is gone, compulsive licking can go on as a bad habit.

What can be done

Of course, before you decide that it’s just a silly habit that needs to be broken you must rule out everything else. Take your cat to the vet, have them run the tests. When you have, and you know that it is not an allergy or an illness, you can start working on breaking the habit.

In our case, it had taken over a year and a half. We had bought a protective collar, that lampshade-like plastic thing cats and dogs wear for awhile after surgery. We easily found one at a pet store, although it was not on display and we had to ask for it and explain what we wanted. The one we got was a little too big for Beanie, so my husband had cut an inch off of the outer age.

When I had first put that collar on, I expected Beanie to be frightened and fight to take it off, but he did amazingly well. He had gotten used to it almost right away. He walked, ate, and slept with it on that very first day, as if it wasn’t there.

We waited for the raw spots to heal and scabs to come off, which happened soon enough. My husband had read it somewhere that it takes a little over 20 days to break a habit, so we waited for a month, to make sure, and attempted to take the protective collar off. Wrong! The first thing Beanie did was to go after his healed up back. He still hadn’t forgotten it. We had to put the collar back on.

I had tried taking it off several more times. The result was always the same: Beanie would start licking right away. Even spraying him with Cool Aid, a bitter-tasting product designed specifically to stop compulsive licking, would only have a temporary effect. As soon as the bitterness wore off, Beanie would be doing it again.

I had begun to think that he would have to wear the collar for the rest of his life. Then a miracle had happened.

When Beanie developed urinary tract infection, I figured it was because he could not clean himself. I decided that I’d rather have a bald cat than a sick cat, so I took the collar off, saying, “That’s it. I give up. If he licks himself raw again, so be it.” But Beanie never did!! From that day on, he was a perfectly normal cat, grooming as all cats do, but never going overboard with it. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps his brain had finally readjusted, or perhaps my prayers had been heard (yes, I am a believer, and I prayed for my cat). Whatever it was, it had worked.

I want to finish this article by encouraging you not to give up on your little friend because of this problem. I know people who were unable to deal with compulsive licking and had gotten rid of their cat. For me, it was not an option, and my patience had been rewarded, as you have just seen.