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.