6 month old F4 Savannah biting/sucking/licking tail

[Nsarno87]

Our 6 month old savannah won't stop sucking and licking the tip of her tail. This weekend she trapped herself in a drawer for like an hour and a half when we went out to dinner and came home and found her and her tail was wet. It dried and she just keeps redoing it now. The other weird thing is we got her this new toy a few days before she got stuck in the drawer and she sucked the wings just like her tail but then stopped and now she's just doing it to her tail only. Can I put bitter apple or something on it to make it taste bad or is that a bad idea? We've been trying to distract her and play w/ her when we see her trying to do it but we don't always notice... And sometimes even when we play with her she will start doing it randomly.

 

[Brigitte Cowell]

Is she doing it continually or just sometimes...like for comfort when she's about to nap/sleep? Like if she were sucking a thumb?

I'm not sure this is a bad thing, or simply a quirk, to know if you need to be working on stopping the habit. IF she were doing it enough to cause harm to herself then definitely you'd want to stop it...

 

[Nsarno87]

She does it every day it's almost always continuously wet and it seems to be only when we're awake because when we wake up she has a dry tail. It's not like a thing before bed thing its almost like she is doing it playfully. I feel like it will eventually cause her harm like hair loss or infection because sometimes she even starts to chew it.

 

[Brigitte Cowell]

I don't know if eventually it will turn bad. I've heard of a couple cats that do suck on their tail tip and in no case did it turn into anything like that. Just a weird habit... I guess it might have the potential to turn into something more OCD-like....but not sure I personally would be that worried about it at this stage.

I don't like putting bitter compounds on the cat as they do groom themselves and by doing that it may make that unpleasant :-(

 

[Nsarno87]

Yeah I thought it might not be a good idea to use bitter apple for that reason but I just can't really think of anything else to curve the behavior.

 

[Nsarno87]

She's also doing more and more of it. When she first started it was maybe an inch now it's like 4 inches today the most it's been.

 

[Jacq]

I have an 8 year old F3 that has always and still does that. He does it to calm himself when he gets worked up. His tail tip is always either wet or crispy feeling. I have never tried to stop the behavior. I don't see any harm in it.

 

[Nsarno87]

She made a small cut on her tail I'm assuming from biting it... She still kept on sucking it with the cut so I ended up getting some bitter apple stuff and put it just on the very tip away from the cut and she has not sucked her tail since.

 

[Patti]

Glad to hear the bitter apple worked!!