Pulling out hair

One of my parent's cats, a brown tabby named Dodsworth, likes to pull out his hair from his stomach all the way down to his ankles. He looks funny, we tease him and call him "naked belly" http://PetoftheDay.com/talk/smile.gif... He has been to the vet and has had steroid & allergy shots, but nothing. They have also tried running Tea Tree Oil on, as well as bitter apple, bitter lemon, bitter lime and bitter grape. We have labeled him as having "obsessive/compulsive disorder"... is there anything else we can use?

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-=> L-A. <=-

How long has Dodsworth being doing this? I only ask because one of my cats, Marty, had the same problem [although more on his back area than his tummy] and eventually, he just 'grew out of it' with no real intervention on our part. He now has a full coat again. Occasionally, we see him 'having a go' at himself again, if he's a bit stressed about something, but nothing like he did when we first got him.

Perhaps Dodsworth will grow out of the habit too?

Love

Wendy

Dodsy has been doing this for about 3 years now... He's almost 6, I think... He has 2 other "siblings", a sister Sheba who is 4, and Tucker who is almost 2.. (He is the twin of my Shubunkin, I got the nicer kitty, Tucks is stuckup.. http://PetoftheDay.com/talk/smile.gif ) The siblings don't bother him in such a way that he would put it out...

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-=> L-A. <=-

My cat, Charlie, did this all her life - she was diagnosed obsessive/compulsive too - in the end we just had to live with it but on the plus side it did her no lasting harm. One point though - we used to think it must have been something we were doing wrong. However, we have two new cats now (sadly, Charlie dies last year for unrelated reasons), and these are both fine with a full complement of fur. My advice - treatments are often stressful for the cat - if you've tried the usual treatments with no success, you may just have to live with a bald cat!