This sounds a bit silly, but my mums cat is an excessive licker. He has licked a sore onto his leg, and my mum has had no choice but to put a collar on his neck and keep him in until it has heeled, however he managed to get at the other night so is back to square one. What can she do to stop him licking it? He is going mad being indoors non stop!

My cat gets eczema now and again and when he does he keeps licking, scratchign and fussing. but the vet gives him antibiotics and other medication, and it makes him all better!

Might be worth a trip to the vet, so he doesnt get infected?

Hope he gets better soon!

Well he has had several trips to the vet already, they gave him a steroid injection last time which made him much happier however the vet said he cant keep having those as he is only young. He is all white so we wonder whether this might mean he has more sensitive skin!

We had the same thing with our idiot. He licked the fur from a 50p sized patch on his shoulder, and the other half put vaseline onto it each day and after a week or so he stopped licking and now the furs all grown back.

Hmm mum has put all sorts on it but it seems to make him lick even more, he has a terribly strong tongue its twice the length of our other cats

White cats do seem to have more sensitive, itchy and delicate skin than most other cats. My Arthur routinely opens himself up in big sores too. We (that's the vet and I) eventually came to the conclusion that the most sensible thing we could do is just to have a tube of Fuciderm (antibiotic, antifungal with added steroid to take away the itch) to hand and to dab a few times a day on the sores. That keeps them clean and keeps the itch away long enough for the skin to close over properly, by which point he leaves it alone and the fur grows back- then he starts on another spot for a few months.

We discussed trying the steroids but in the end decided that the conservative approach was better for Arthur provided we could prevent the sores from becoming infected. I think it all depends on how bothered the cat is by the sores, how much of his skin surface is affected at any point and whether he's short or long haired (long hair can get terribly stuck in open sores causing pain and infection).

For what it's worth I don't think that keeping him in a buster collar long term is going to do much other than make him more stressed, which is likely to make his licking worse as it's been proven to be stress related in most cats.