Monday, November 28, 2011

Feline Wellness - Acne

Today starts a new series of on-going blog posts I will be doing about Feline Wellness, inspired by all my fellow cat bloggers who blog for feline health!
Feline Acne,  is actually a common ailment that cats face. In fact it is so common, it happened in my household today. My cat Brooke seems to be having a difficult bout of acne. Our black cat Henry is prone to cat acne on his chin. Though his acne is not ever as large as Brooke's and it always dissapears quickly.

Brooke lounging on my bed after her visit to the vet.

This past Sunday night my parents noticed that Brooke seemed to have small bumps on the side of her face. Not wanting to be alarmists, we decided that we would watch the bumps but not take immediate action. This morning as I was lying in bed, I was givving Brooke a chin rub when I felt quite a few more bumps under her chin. They were close to her collar and seemed to be about pea sized.

Since these lumps seemed to be out of the ordinary, we decided to take extra precaution and make Brooke a vet appointment. Fortunately, the vet had an appointment a few hours later.

Our vet felt under Brooke's chin and was surprised to feel how large the bumps were. Perhaps it is due to stress. Brooke's routine has been disturbed when my parents went to France for a week, in addition to being closed out of my room while my grandparents were staying there. Even though all has been returned to normal, Brooke appears her normal self.

The problem with feline acne, is that the exact cause is truly unknown. Ways to help avoid or reduce the cause of feline acne include not using plastic bowls (try ceramic or metal bowls), wiping the area after eating, and keeping the food bowls as clean as possible.


Right under Brooke's chin is where the acne lies.

The vet gave Brooke a shot to hopefully rid her of the acne within the next two weeks. After the two weeks have gone by, the hope is for the acne bumps to have dissapeared. I will post an update about Brooke's acne in two weeks, along with my next feline health post.

1 comment:

  1. My Cosmo had acne once and I had never even heard about about it before that incident. Nice post!

    ReplyDelete