Hi everyone,
I haven't posted for a long time, and everything with my boy Taz has been great until recently. He's just started having a recurrence of a previous problem where he'll bite/rub at his own penis until there is bleeding and tissue damage. I've already contacted a vet for emergent care, and am now on to further out the roots of the problem which are likely behavioural. I'm looking for people's comments and thoughts about how I should go about dealing with this confusing situation. I have just written a behaviourist in my area,
http://www.animalbehaviour.ca for his opinion of my situation. From here on, i will just copy/paste the email I have sent him for explanation of the problems my poor little guy Taz is facing.
I'm really feeling for Taz, there must be something very troubling for him and I'm very anxious to figure it out.
Thanks in advance for all of your thoughts,
Brian
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I found your website and have some questions, mainly weather you think your services might help my situation. I'll give you some background for making this judgement and I look forward to your response for advice for a formal consultation or not.
I have a neutered male bengal cat named Taz who is about a year and a half old, born in August '07. He's seem to have a compulsion for biting and pawing at his own penis, and I think that general stress is an influencing factor, but I think he may have a more serious issue such as panic attacks or a clinically recognizable obsessive compulsive problem. I'll try and explain best why I think there is a behavioural basis to this.
The first series of episodes of this problem all started February '08, after my family got him for me during Christmas '07. My parents had gone away for a week in February, and in that time Taz started to bite at himself. I took him to the vet, and although they said he had a urinary tract infection I think there might have been a false positive from the tests because of local infection on his penis from biting. I also suspect this because there was no unusual urination such as out of the box, or frequently in small amounts or any obvious straining or pain during urination. We were given a topical antibiotic which we applied as well as a systemic antibiotic to treat the suspected urinary tract infection.
The problem is, he continued this automutilation behaviour for a few months afterwards. The biting wasn't associated with any specific activities such as immediately after urination etc, he could just start biting out of the blue, such as soon after waking up from sleeping or even sometimes during a play session with a string or other toy.
Eventually, he stopped with constant reinforcement of steering his attention away from the biting and much of this time wearing a cone collar especially at night or while there was no one at home.
This was when I live with my family in Ottawa, and in September '08 I moved to Hamilton with Taz. Even after the stress of the move and an introduction to my roomates cat (a whole female cat, about 2 yrs old, Taz was the only cat at home with my parents in Ottawa) he was just fine until recently. About three weeks ago, before heading back to Ottawa for the holidays he started to show an increased interest in smelling/washing his privates. Again, i just steered his attention away from himself and things were fine. After getting back to Ottawa for the holidays, he started the biting again and did relatively minor damage the first time yet was still bleeding. We took him to the vet, and the urinalysis and culture did not turn up any signs of infection or crystals etc, and I am now again faced with figuring out the cause of this.
Since this occurred after hours on a weekend, we took him to an emergency clinic. I discussed the options of a neuroleptic medication such as paroxetine, and the vet who is not Taz's normal vet said she wasn't prepared to prescribe something like this yet, without having he urin samples looked at yet or without some consultation with someone in animal behaviour. I gather the possibilities for explaining his problems are dermatological issues such as contact allergies or behavioural problems, which I understand to be sometimes hard to differentiate.
As far as allergies are concerned, I did buy some 'cheap' litter soon before this problem recurred recently but, as I previously mentioned the biting didn't start after he and I returned to Ottawa for the holidays, and he had been using this litter for over a week prior to this. Obviously, I have put him back on his regular litter now which he's used without problems for quite a while.
There are some specific reasons that I think this is more of a behavioural problem, specifically that he does look scared when he starts to bite at himself, and he tends to try and carry on for about 15-45 minutes usually after he starts. He also has a mixture of behvaiours towards me during those times. As he is normally an absolutely playful and easy going cat with no aggressive intentions, especially with me. He is very different after he starts trying to bite himself and he seems to have a lot of aggression towards me. He'll growl and hiss at me (which he only ever otherwise does when introducing him to my roomates cat in September, and now reintroducing again after the holidays) and will just latch on to my arm and start biting me. The situation is extremely hard to deal with because if I let him go, he'll go back to trying to bite and if he has the cone collar on he'll sit back and start pawing at his privates, so I am faced with his aggression to avoid him from damaging from himself. Again, he is never like this otherwise with me and only gets into this aggressive behaviour when I try and stop him from biting at himself. Often, his penis will also be erect and i can see that he's contracting and relaxing his penis a lot. Since there might be an element of positive feedback with this problem such as the injuring himself, which makes him sore, and in turn makes him more interested in biting at it further, we got some xylecaine gel from the vet to try and numb the area when he starts to seem bothered by his penis.
He seems to quiet down a bit over time, with holding him and distractions such as trying to initiate him into playing with a toy. And usually after an intense episode, he seems to rebound into an overly quiet state of mind and will often sleep it off soon after.
Well, I think I have given a lot of information and I eagerly await your response to see whether you think your services may be of help or if you have any advice that I might follow. If you need any further information, please email me back or call me on my cellphone...
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