Diabetic cat (now in remission) overgrooming, anal gland problem?

Hello everyone,

our diabetic 10 year old tom-cat has been in a second remission for a month now. Before that he was on insulin for two months and in a remission for almost a year.

He started overgrooming almost 2 years ago, before he was diagnosed with diabetes. At the beginning it was unnoticeable, small area next to his private parts, but when the doctors shaved his belly to do ultrasound he started licking the whole belly, inner thighs, part of a ribcage on one side, soles of his paws!!! and a few lines along his paws.
No fleas were ever found but the docs said it was flea allergy.
Then they said it was psycho-somatic.
Then they said it was an allergic reaction. We have just switched his food, previously he had been on raw chicken ever since he first went into remission (actually we are convinced that the chicken brought his sugar levels to normal).

I've heard from a friend who has a female cat, that for her the problem was clogged anal glands!
She was licking her belly and inner things and not her anal region. Nothing helped until one vet remembered to check her anal glands, and voilà!

I checked our cats anal glands tonight and only his right one was impacted.

Has anybody had similar experience?

We are at our wits end. He's a lovely soul, our cat, and has been suffering a lot.

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

We have a similar problem with Little Dude. He has scratched and licked off a lot of his fur, making bald patches. We switched food and it helped a little bit.

We also found out he had round worms, probably from eating a rat or mouse. He is getting 2 groups of treatments. The internal worms could definitely cause an external allergy.

I don't want to get too gross. But the vet did a fecal test which didn't show any worms. However before I went to the vet, I had seen one poking out and moving around. When I tried to grab it, it went back in. My point is the fecal test is not always proof. Yeah, pretty gross.

 

Thank you JeffJ!

Gross, yes... but I laughed, the things we do for our furry friends
I recently gave our cat a treatment against worms (a vet recommended it to us). Hopefully it worked.

I hope that the diet change will help.
I've never seen a flea, or even a trace of a flea on our cat.

I was thinking of trying and alcohol-free Bach remedy for pets (posted a thread: http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/...in-remission-overgrooming-bach-remedy.189969/).

 

They can also get mites. Not all cats are allergic to mites.
The Advantage flea medicine can help with that.

Same thing here - there are no fleas on any of the 3 cats. We combed diligently to see if they reoccurred. Our next round against this will be Advantage. For Little Dude, it has an adverse affect. It caused his hair to permanently fall out at the location on the back of his scruff. So I don't like to apply it.