Cat being aggressive with his tail
Hello Everyone,
I have a 13 year old male tuxedo who in the past few months started to become aggressive with his own tail. Once a day or so I catch him chasing his tail in a non-playful manner. Once he gets focused on it, it's hard to break his attention. I've had him since he was a kitten and have never seen this behavior before. He hisses at it, implying that he doesn't realize it's his own (although I don't know if cats really do recognize what their tail is). It's unlike him to hiss as I can probably count on one hand how many times he's done it in the 13 years I've had him.
About a month ago he must have successfully caught his tail and injured himself, causing himself to bleed a good bit from it. I took him to the vet as soon as I noticed, they cleaned the wounds and sent me home with gabapentin to give him temporarily as a sedation. I've given it a couple weeks of giving him the gabapentin daily, but as soon as it starts to wear off, he goes back at it again.
We had a second instance this past weekend where he caught his tail and bled a decent amount. I cleaned his tail and resumed the gabapentin, but I'm starting to think this treatment is only masking what the real issue is. He seems fine otherwise, but I hate that he's drugged up and sedated all the time.
Has anyone experienced their cat self mutilating their own tail before? I've got another vet appointment scheduled, but was curious if anyone has experienced this before. Really concerned for my little guy.