Feline hyperesthesia syndrome. What is it?

You might have heard of rolling skin disease, also known as feline hyperesthesia. This is a rare disease that makes your cat feel attacked.

What is feline hyperesthesia?

Does your cat spend more time than normal cleaning itself? That means something bad is happening. This will be most likely feline hyperesthesia, a disorder that affects the neuromuscular system and that highly increases skin sensitivity. If your pet suffers from this disease, its back skin ripples from the shoulders to the tail; the back, the tail and the pelvis being the most affected areas. Unfortunately, this is an illness that cannot be treated - however, if your cat suffers from hyperesthesia, it will have some brief attacks and once this has been recovered from, its life will get back to normal.

The symptoms of hyperesthesia

Feline hyperesthesia symptoms are varied, and that’s why you need to make sure you don’t mix it up with other sicknesses.

- Behavior change, as well as anxiety, stress and nervousness

- Strong tail shake

- Aggressive behavior

- Compulsive tail lick, tail bite

- Back skin ripple

- Muscle spasm, convulsion, tic and tail itch

- Running about

- Coat loss

- Pupil dilation

- Extreme sensitivity to touch

- Hallucination (chase things that cannot be seen)

Your cat might cause an injury on the skin, or even engage in self-mutilation while trying to scratch itself.

The causes of hyperesthesia

A possible cause could be convulsions if your pet suffers from epilepsy. Some cats even have convulsions at the same time or after a hyperesthesia seizure. Hyperesthesia might be caused by an issue in the electrical activity of the brain area that controls cleanliness, predatory behavior and emotions. Another considered cause could be an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Stress could trigger these seizures. But in fact, the actual reason remains unknown. In the case your cat has allergic dermatitis, it could violently lick and scratch itself; and if it has dry skin, this stinging could make hyperesthesia worse. It is believed more nervous and hyperactive cats are more likely to suffer from this disease. In any case, we recommend that you to visit the vet if you see that your cat has any of the symptoms mentioned above.

Source: Actualidad Mascotas