I have an 8 year old domestic short/hair that been living with me for the last 2 years. Before she lived with me, she was a stray for I don’t know how long.

In September, she started licking a bald patch into her shoulders. It got so bad that she was bleeding almost daily from it. We kept an eye on it, and since it didn’t spread and we didn’t see anything out of the ordinary aside from the licking and she stopped a few weeks later (or so we thought) we let it go. Then in December we (I and my roommates) noticed that she had started up on her belly. And it was a lot worse (as you can see from the pictures). So I took her to the vet, the vet said that there was nothing wrong physically, checked her for fleas, etc. we took her home and kept on keeping on, we thought it might be allergies to chicken, so we put her on a limited-ingredient diet…but that also didn’t fix the problem. Eventually, she stopped again, and it’s been so long that her belly fur grew back and she seemed content and fine. But I moved back in with my parents after Uni and starting the week before I left, she started licking again.

I’ve been keeping her busy, I play with her for 20 min, 3 times a day (yes, I have to schedule play time as I’m balancing school and work). In between I leave her with a ton of toys, tunnels and brain puzzles (with treats). I leave windows open for her to watch the world. Even with all this, she spends 90% of her time snuggled up on my bed next to me as I work.

I’m at a complete loss as to what is wrong and what I should do. She doesn’t seem uncomfortable, she lies on her belly with no reaction, she’s just as cuddly, vocal and relaxed as usual. I checked out the grimace scale and from what I can assume, she’s less grimace-y here than she was at my old place. I’m at the point where all I can do is stop/redirect her from licking if I spot it and consider buying her a sweater to cover the area…but then she’ll redirect (she did when I covered her shoulder previously).

I’m terrified she has cancer because my friend’s cat was licking obsessively and it was discovered he had skin cancer. I’ve seen no moles, marks or discolouration, but Idk if cats have the same markers as humans…she’s my world and saved me from one of the worst years of my life. I can’t afford to bring her to a million vets to find out that it’s a behavioural problem, so I wanted to hear more experienced cat-parent opinions before I start hunting for vets again.