I feel horrible and wanted to see if anyone else experienced this plus had any advice… so about 2-3 weeks ago I noticed Simba had some longer hair sticking out under just his left chin that would be dripping wet after drinking from his water bowl and it started matting up like last week. Instead of researching (which I usually do arrgh!) I just assumed it was a grooming/possible shedding thing so my husband and I tried to help him comb out the matting and little clumps of fur would come out on the comb (I have the Hairbuster).

But it’s pretty hard to access his chin area in detail without holding him down because he’s extra sensitive to his chin being touched and would flinch away and his fuzzy cheeks pretty much cover it. Then just this past Friday my husband was going to comb his face again and finally got a chance to really pull back his cheek fur and realized there’s a big bald patch where we were combing and possibly a cut from Simba scratching himself! I started looking up conditions and I think he may have been experiencing moist dermatitis (moist chin) from using a water bowl but I don’t know if my husband and I had over-groomed the area and pulled the fur out causing the bald spot or if it’s something else… here are some pics of the spot:

From a little distance for a better sense of where the bald patch is:

The bald patch up close:

The same spot on the right side for what it normally looks like:

I found some old posts about bald spots and possible moist dermatitis and decided in the meantime to apply some A+D Original cream to the spot and have taken away his water bowl for him to just use his bottle (but he drinks so much less with just the bottle and it’s been very hot).

Here’s a pic of Simba McGrump’s look of betrayal after my husband and I held him down to apply the cream last night (Sunday). The scratch looks like it’s healed already and the bald spot is still pink, doesn’t look inflamed, just looks dry kind of like it wants to crust. He was not gonna have it for us to take new pics of his bald spot… 

Any advice or past experiences would be greatly appreciated!