Cat fight

We had a cat show up at our door that appears to have been in a fight.
The hair has been pulled out behind it's eat about the size of a
silver dollar. It seemed to scab over very good and no infction is
visuable. But today I saw it scratching off the scab and it is back to
being raw. Is there anything i can put on it omnce it scabs over
again?

Thanks

On Mar 19, 1:27*pm, c1gmlm wrote:

But today I saw it scratching off the scab and it is back to
being raw. Is there anything i can put on it omnce it scabs over
again?

You will have to either do something to keep the wound from infecting
while it heals naturally, or numb it so that the cat leaves it alone
as it heals - just as with people, scabs are very itchy to cats.

If the cat lets you handle it, *and you do not want to get a vet
involved - probably with stitches*, you might start with Neosporin -
understanding that by introducing an antibiotic you are making a 10-
day, every-day committment. If you want to just try to give the wound
a chance to heal, there are several grades of "New Skin" liquid
bandage that will help a great deal.

http://www.newskinproducts.com/liquid-bandage.htm Cats don't like
licking this stuff either - a good thing.

Note that it is an irritant when it first hits the skin, so be
prepared for a bit of a reaction before it numbs the area. If you can
keep the cat with you long enough to give it several coats that, too
would be useful.

Note that Neosporin and New Skin are incompatible - it is one or the
other. due to the sealing effect of the New Skin. Note also that New
Skin should NOT be put over any wound that shows any sign of infection
at all.

Betadyne is an excellent and low-irritation, low-toxicity antiseptic
which you should use as the first treatment before the New Skin just
in case you seal in something not quite sterile. One more useful
aspect of Betadyne is that if you squirt a bit in each ear it does a
great job of driving out ear-mites as well as loosening the cake they
build up.

The last best thing you might do for this cat is to make sure that it
is well-fed for the healing period. This leads up to the issue of
taking responsibility once you do start feeding it and medicating it.
It is a very, very tough call sometimes. We are working with an orange
stray in our neighborhood and what makes it even harder is that it was
a former resident in our house before that family lost it due to
foreclosure some years ago and entirely unknown to us when we moved
in. Now nearly four years later she is friendly enough to talk to, but
will not let anyone touch her or go any much closer than 10 feet or
so. I suppose I could trap it, and I suppose it could be re-introduce
to family life - but we have sufficient of our own and the local no-
kill shelters are quite full up these days. And, sadly, it is not a
very attractive cat as these things go and so unlikely to do well in a
local SPCA - entirely apart from the trauma involved.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA