For more than a year now, our cat has been in and out of a cone because she keeps tearing up the flesh in front of her ear. We’ve taken her to the vet several times, they give us a different answer each time and whatever the solution the provide it ultimately does nothing. Ears are clean, no fleas, no obvious health issues. Anxiety meds just made her scratch lazily, antibiotics for cat scratch inflammation, did nothing. Topicals and antifungal, just make for slimey scabs. The best I’ve managed is using an anti itching cera-ve cream 4 times a day, but if I miss, there goes her face again.
We’re at a loss at this point. She’s otherwise very happy and loving, but it’s starting to take a toll. We have to baby proof the house because when she can’t scratch the spot she’ll just scratch it on box corners, table edges, the dish washer, etc. She can’t groom in the cone and when we try to brush her she just shoves her crusty wound on us to itch it. We love her so much and just want her better.
One of our cats suffers from severe itchiness too. We tried steroids, changing his food, Benadryl, Zyrtec, and flea treatment, none of which worked. What did work for him is Gabapentin. It acts as a nerve blocker and stops his itching.
He also suffers from dry skin which might be a root cause, so we are going to add a fish oil supplement to see if that helps as well.
So the better of the vets hit us with gabapentin, we thought that was working out at first until we see her half dead on the tv stand slowly and methodically slicing this spot like a slow motion horror scene. Turns out it didn’t get rid of the drive, just made her slow and less winy about it.