The flea collar problem

Contact dermatitis is a skin ailment of cats, and the most common cause of it—is flea collars. Most cats wear them without any problems, but some cats break out in the neck area, and the only solution is to remove the collar. There are many other excellent flea treatments available now, so flea collar dermatitis is nothing to fret over.

Frozen cat

Frostbite is not funny. At extremely low temperatures, human skin can suffer tissue damage, which in mild cases leads to temporary pain and numbness but in more severe cases leads to tissue death.

It happens most often to the ears and nose, the areas least likely to be covered. And that is precisely where cats get frost-bitten: the areas with the least hair, their ears, nose and paw pads. (For some odd reason the tip of the tail seems vulnerable also.) An obvious bit of advice to pet owners in cold areas: don’t let the cat outside if it is extremely cold.

Feline sunburn

The vet calls it by the fancy name actinic dermatitis, but let’s call it what it is: sunburn. Most cats won’t burn, but the ones most likely to are white cats with blue eyes. (In other words, cats who correspond to blue-eyed, fair-skinned, easy-to-burn humans.) A sunburned cat shows redness around the ears, eyelids, nose and mouth.

With a bad burn, there may be hair loss, peeling and itching. Needless to say, it is more common in summer than in winter. Over time, the “fair” cats who have been overexposed to the sun can develop skin cancers, which is also true for sun-worshipping humans. One obvious way to avoid this is keep the cat inside, especially at midday.

The bad news about skin cancer

The good news is that most human skin cancers are benign. The bad news is that most cat skin cancers are malignant, and they are also the second most common cancer found in cats. (Lymphoma is the first.) They are more likely to occur in older cats, and the cats most at risk to develop it are white cats, especially those with blue eyes.

The danger of skin cancers is their ability to spread to other organs, usually the lymph nodes first, then the lungs. Vets try whenever possible to remove the cancers surgically. Obviously, as with human skin cancers, the earlier the cancer is found, the more likely that treatment will be successful.

Just call him Saki

The British writer Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916) wrote his many clever short stories under the pen name Saki. Among Saki’s stories is “Tobermory,” whose title character is a cat who can talk.

Some of the human characters tease Tobermory about his having an affair with a lady cat who lives at the stable. Then it dawns on them that the cat, climbing around in windowsills as cats are inclined to do, is all too aware of their affairs.

The Jungle Book man

The British author Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry, but he is probably best remembered for The Jungle Book, which features several big cat characters, such as the panther Bagheera and the fierce tiger Shere Khan.

He also wrote the wonderful story “The Cat Who Walked by Himself,” in which Man and Woman tame all manner of animals but don’t quite succeed in taming the cat. The cat finally agrees to live in the humans’ house and catch mice, but he is never completely tamed. He is “the cat who walks by himself.” As you might expect, Kipling was very fond of cats.

Melanoma

One word you don’t want to hear from your dermatologist during his diagnosis is melanoma, a type of skin cancer that begins as a small dark brown or black mole on the body.

Melanoma is dangerous for both humans and cats, but humans are fortunate in being able to monitor their skin for unusual growths, while on cats the melanoma may be well hidden underneath the hair. In some cases, an early melanoma may not be life threatening, but, sadly, many cats have died from this cancer.

Do cats get warts?

Well, they can get acne, but not warts. Cats do get a form of a skin tumor called a papilloma, which slightly resembles warts. These are usually benign, and usually found on the face. But actual warts, which are caused by viruses, are not found on cats, which is good news because the viruses that cause warts are contagious.

The gum test

“Open your mouth and say ‘Ah!’” may be good advice when monitoring a cat’s health. A healthy cat has nice pink gums, and if the gums are pale, that may be a sign of severe problems, such as anemia or internal bleeding. One condition that does not need to be a concern is the presence of black spots on the gums. These would be strange in a human mouth, but they are perfectly normal for many cats.

Why not just say “baldness”?

The technical term for baldness is alopecia, and cats are subject to a form of it, though a very different form than the human male-pattern baldness. Feline endocrine alopecia is probably hormone related (as is male-pattern baldness), but the areas where the hair thins are the posterior, underside of the tail, belly and inside of the thighs.

The remaining hairs can be easily pulled out, but the areas are never completely smooth. No pain is involved, but it does make the cat look less attractive. Some cases respond to hormone treatments. (There is no “Hair Club for Cats,” as far as we know.)