Excessive Grooming in Cats

Cats spend an enormous amount of time grooming themselves, but excessive grooming in cats may result in their losing fur and making areas of their body completely bare. Excessive grooming can cause your cat to suffer with too many hairballs, and excessive grooming may be a symptom of various health conditions.

In this article, we’ll discuss four common reasons for cat overgrooming and what you can do to stop it.

watch my video: excessive grooming in cats

What is Cat Grooming?

Cats can spend up to 50% of their waking hours grooming themselves. Cat grooming removes loose hair, parasites and dirt from the cat’s coat. It also helps stimulate oil production, which helps keep their skin healthy and makes their fur silky soft and shiny.

Kittens learn to groom selves by copying their mother. Most are bathing themselves by the time they’re weaned.

You may be surprised to learn that cats don’t sweat or pant to cool themselves. They lick themselves instead, which spreads saliva on their fur. The evaporation of the saliva helps cool them off – like when we get out of the tub or swimming pool and we’re freezing until we dry off!

4 Reasons for Cat Overgrooming

You should always let your veterinarian know if you think your cat is doing anything excessively, including overgrooming. Your vet is the best resource for figuring out why your cat is grooming excessively.

That being said, here are four common reasons for excessive grooming in cats.

1. Allergies. Your cat’s skin can be irritated by food allergies, environmental allergies and flea allergies. If it’s flea season and your cat is excessively licking, I suggest using Advantage flea protection .

Food allergies can cause itchy skin as well. Environmental allergies can be caused by things like poison ivy, weeds or pollen if you have an outdoor cat.

2. Pain or injury. Cats may excessively lick themselves if they are experiencing pain or discomfort. A good sign of this is if the cat is excessively licking in one particular area. Urinary tract infections, for example, are quite common in cats and may result in their excessively licking around the genitals.

An older cat may be experiencing arthritis or joint pain, possibly causing them to excessively lick in those areas in an attempt to alleviate the pain.

3. Boredom. Cats who don’t get enough exercise or mental stimulation can become bored and begin excessively grooming themselves. Cat overgrooming is especially common in indoor cats. Make sure your cat has enough to do. You should provide a variety of toys for your cat, including interactive cat toys.

Also provide a scratching post and something to sit high upon, like a perch or cat tree. Also make sure you’re playing with your cat often enough. If you have an indoor cat, you should play with your cat for at least 15 minutes three times a day.

4. Stress or Anxiety. Some believe that cats licking themselves releases endorphins that help relieve stress and anxiety. Compulsive grooming, known as psychogenic alopecia, can be triggered by big changes such as moving or adding a new pet, person or baby to the household.

To find out more about what causes stress and anxiety for your cat, read my article, Cat Stress Relievers – 10 Things That Stress Your Cat Out.

Fun Fact: I just found out recently that if a cat gets too hot, they’ll literally cover their whole body with saliva! It’s kind of like when we’re swimming or when we get out of the shower. When we’re wet, we get cold. So they apparently make themselves wet to cool themselves down!

Shortly after I found this out, I went to pet my cat one day and his fur was all wet! I immediately turned up the air conditioning.

That’s my boy, Whiskers in the picture with the love of his life, Marsha. Seriously. He got that mechanical squirrel for Christmas and he’s madly in love with her! He didn’t name her Marsha, I did. LOL

Be Patient With Your Cat

Cats grooming themselves should never result in punishment. This will likely make it worse. Be patient with your cat and use the tips discussed in this article, plus the help of your veterinarian, to find out the reason for the excessive grooming.

Also remember that excessive grooming, regardless of the reason, can become a habit for your cat. So be patient and realize it may take a month or so for the behavior to stop once the cause is resolved, and it can take a long time for lost fur to grow back.

Is Your Cat Grooming YOU?

If your cat is not just excessively grooming themselves but are also trying to groom YOU, read my article, Why Do Cats Lick People? for help in reducing that as well. Unless you enjoy being covered in cat spit, that is.

Need Help with Cat Training?

If you need more help with your cat’s behavior, I can recommend a very good ebook on cat training called, Complete Cat Training Guide.

This ebook is instantly downloable and packed with information on how to solve 25 different cat behavior problems.

I Donate to Animal Charities

Thank you for visiting my website. I hope you’ll be able to get to the bottom of why your cat is grooming themseslves so much!

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. I donate 10% of my earnings to animal charities. You can see a list of the charities I donate to here.

If you like this website, please share it with your friends and family who love animals. Thank you! Debra