Wondering Why Your Cat is Losing Hair Around Its Neck?

If your cat has been losing hair around their neck, you might be about ready to tear out your own hair trying to find answers. There are a lot of different reasons cats might be losing hair around their necks, which range in degrees of seriousness. Here some possible causes to investigate:

• An irritating collar
• Diet (dry cat food)
• Food allergies (many purebreds are allergic to chicken, grains, and sometimes fish)
• A particularly bad pollen season causing seasonal allergies
• Fleas
• Flea medicine irritating the back of the neck
• A reaction to a drug
• Hormonal or glandular problems
• Stress
• Alopecia
• Bacterial or fungal infections
• Mange – caused by a cluster of ear or skin mites
• Ringworm
• Pemphigus Foliaceus – an autoimmune disease that manifests hair loss and skin irritation

If your cat is losing their hair, here are a few possible cat hair loss treatments to try:

• Put apple cider vinegar or hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball and dab it on the itchy spot.
• Make sure they are on a good flea control.
• Immunotherapy for allergies.
• Give them colloidal silver or put it on them.
• Stay on your your vet to run allergy tests. Some treatments your vet might recommend include special shampoo, steroids, a shot of Prednisone, Atopica, or Apoquel.
• Get a biopsy to rule out more serious cat health problems.
• Changing diets
  • Switch to wet food (or at least 50/50) diet.
  • Try a novel protein diet, like rabbit.
  • If you try different diets, your cat will need to be on a diet for at least a month to determine whether or not they are allergic to it.

Try basic solutions like checking on their collar or changing their diet first, but if the hair loss doesn’t go away, the best thing to do is to talk to your vet and see what tests or treatment they recommend.

Have you ever dealt with hair loss in cats around the neck? What was the cause? What treatments did you use? Share here!