Cat Chat Feline Forum

Hi, not been on for quite a while but I was wondering if anyone has come across this before. I have a 9 week old kitten (Harry) that came in as an orphan at 1 day old and have been hand rearing him. We've had a few rough moments with him but he is now healthy and racing round like a lunatic. I noticed last week that all of the whiskers round his mouth/nose area are very short (about a quarter of an inch long) but his eyebrows are the normal length. I mentioned it to the vet last week and she couldn't find any medical reason for it. I know mum cats sometimes chew off the whiskers but he's not got a mum so that's not what's happened. I've recently introduced him to my other cats and one of them has decided he wants to mother him so I wondered if it could be Buster that's chewed them off. Has anyone come across this?

Here's a photo taken about a week or so ago. The whiskers are even shorter now.

I had the exact same thing happen to my Roland when he was a kitten.
When I asked my vet his explanation was that because Roland was hand reared he hadn't got all the vitamins and minerals from his mum and that as he got older they would grow back.
They did, Roland had a wonderful set of whiskers by the time he was 6 months old.

Sorry, I'm not very kitten-savvy and hadn't heard of this happening ..... but I just had to say how cute is Harry! Lovely pic.

When our lot were babies Henry hardly ever had whiskers. We always assumed it was because he broke them playing. We were a bit embarrassed when we took him to,the vets incase they thought we had been mistreating him!!

They grew back and he has a fine set now!

Harry is a handsome boy by the way

Yes, Harry is very sweet! I think Ruth is right, I think it is a sign of early deficiencies and nothing to worry about.

Tommy went through a phase of wonky whiskers (I wish I had a photo of him then). He looked like the guy in the 'Go Compare' ad - with the permed moustache!