Feline acne?

One of our cats has black stuff on his chin under his bottom lip. After looking this up on the internet we have pretty much come to the conclusion that he has feline acne. He is a very overweight cat around 3-4 years old I think. He has been fed dry food most of his life along with table scraps. Stopped feeding table scraps about 4-5 months ago. Have recently had one of our cats diagnosed with diabetes, so we will be changing ALL cats to canned food diet very soon (as soon as we run out of dry food actually).

Anyway, back to the acne... we've been using facial cleansing pads on him periodically. The black stuff seems to lessen when that is done on a regular basis. Some of it will come off on the wipe while he is being cleaned.

Anyone have any experience with this and know anything about it? Is cleansing wipes a sound method of treatment, or should we be doing something else?

Help would be appreciated! Thanks in advance.

-=][V][=-

[Edit]Found a picture on Google images. This is kind of what his chin looks like:

http://img.webmd.com/dtmcms/live/webmd/ ... e_acne.jpg

[/Edit]

 

This is typically caused by using plastic bowls and containers as food bowls. So, first off you need to change your dishes - to ceramic, glass, stainless steel or even paper.

It will take a long time to remove this, but if you gently clean the area with a light soap - like baby shampoo and paper towel (or wash cloth), once a day, this will help clean it up.

 

Had the same thing with my cat a year ago. I agree with the previous poster, its all in the bowls. My cat was eating out of a plastic bowl. When I switched to stainless steel and ceramic, it was all gone.

 

We have both plastic and stainless steel bowls right now. I've been making sure for the past couple weeks that he gets one of the stainless steel ones. I will be buying some more steel bowls when I get paid and making sure they all get one.

Thanks!

-M

 

That's a good idea, in the meantime, you can use paper plates/bowls.

 

My Cole has had a lot of problems with feline acne. We ditched plastic dishes, but ceramic bowls continued the problem. The vet recommended stridex pads so I bought the extra-sensitive-skin ones. They helped when she had really bad lumps. Only stainless steel bowls have worked for her. I get the shallow ones from petsmart and use the sanitize level on the dishwasher.

good luck!
laur

 

We used hydrogen peroxide, and switched to ceramic dishes. Gwyn had a really mild case, cleared up in about a week to ten days.

 

What about styrafoam bowls. I switched from ceramic when life got a little crazier than usual. Do they cause problems?

 

styrofoam - it's possible - personally, if you keep to glass, stainless steel or ceramic, you are much better off.

 

My fd Charlie has acne problems too. We have always used stainless steel for water bowls, and disposable paper bowls for wet food, so I know its not from his bowls.

In the past, I have used bathroom wipes to clean his chin. I would take the cottonelle brand, cut a sheet into 6 smaller pieces and use a new one every day. This helped, but didn't clear up all the problems. He had a particularly large pimple on the center of his chin that would not go away. My drooler had surgery the end of April, and the vet sent me home with antiseptic squares to clean her wounds with. After she was healed, I still had a bunch left over, so I started using them on Charlie. It cleared up even the most stubborn areas, and now I use one once a week when I do his weekly bg test (he's otj).

They are called Chlorhexadine Squares, and my vet gave me a huge bag for $9. Not sure if you could get some from your vet, but if the other suggestions given don't help, it might be a solution.

As far as bowls are concerned, the stainless steel ones are relatively inexpensive. I also use the dixie brand paper bowls for their wet food, their price isn't too bad and they hold up overnight.