Holes in my cat's skin

[vistic]

We have a young cat who was a stray by our house.  A few weeks ago we had her spayed, and when she came back we started noticing skin lesions on her belly and side.  It's like a ring of dead skin, and then the skin in the middle of the ring just dies and falls off, leaving basically almost a hole in the skin.  We took her to a emergency clinic who prescribed an antibiotic and offered to do a culture for $200 but we couldn't afford that right now.  So the cat is on antibiotics, pain killers, and has a cone so as not to lick the wounds.  They shaved her some more and found even more of these patches on her back.  I have never heard of anything like this, and I want to make sure we take action before it gets any worse.  As far as the cat herself goes, she seems completely normal behaviorally, she doesn't even seem bothered by the holes in her skin.

[Aleda M Cheng, D.V.M., C.V.A]

Continue with the antibiotic for now but please bring her to your regular vet (not the emergency vet) as soon as you can.  Your regular vet will perform a skin scraping to check for scabies, demodex, notodectes and other mites, and ectoparasites.  Your vet should also check to see if it is a fungal or yeast infection by using a woods lamp or fungassay or both.  He or she  may suggest a culture and sensitivity but this test usually costs a lot less than the $200 that the emergency vet charges.  Since it sounds unusual your vet may want to perform a skin biopsy which would cost around $200, but this could be done when all other possibilities were exhausted.  The stress of the spay could have caused the outbreak of an underlying skin condition.  This is fairly common under the conditions you describe.  A spay is major surgery and can effect the immune system of the most healthy pet.  Ringworm looks as you describe in Humans but not in cats.  The lesions you describe sound like a Staph Pyoderma skin infection and is usually very responsive to an antibiotic such as Clavamox or Simplicef.

[ireneo]

Ringworm or some kind of pox maybe?

[amanda139]

sounds like mange to me but I am no vet