12 year old cat, hair loss in clumps with scabs

[Heathlingboots]

My cat, Jersey, is a 12 year old, black and white, domestic short-hair. Up until about 10 months ago, we haven't had any problems with him aside from the rare hairball or vomiting and some slight arthritis starting in his right paw in the past year.

About 10 months ago when this started, we noticed little tiny clumps of hair around the house on the carpet. At first I thought he was shedding his hair (he has a lot of hair for a short-haired domestic) and thought nothing of it. After a few weeks though, I became worried. I then saw him biting it out of his coat and that is when I took him to the vet. However, the vet did not address this issue and thus, I will be going back to speak about it.

We did move about a year ago but we ruled that out when the hair continued to be found on the carpet. We also ruled out his food as well as his litter and any other changes that may have been causing him stress.

He is an indoor cat though I did check for flea dirt for we did bring a new cat into the house that was previous a stray. He was also checked for fleas, ticks, worms and ear mites and both were given medication at the vet to counteract these insects.

Everything else is normal from what I can tell. His litter box habits are normal and his feces is formed as it should be. He is also eating well, there's always fresh water that I find him drinking (not excessively) and is sleeping. All around he shows no signs of distress aside from when he bites the hair out of his coat.

The clumps of hair are just that except earlier tonight I pulled out a clump for it was sticking out and there seemed to be scabbing at the bottom of the clump. I haven't seen him scratching excessively though it obviously needs to be from him scratching too hard. I've checked his skin and nothing looks out of the ordinary and I couldn't find any more scabs at this moment.

Anyone else have anything similar?

[Love4himies]

Has the vet done a scraping on the affected areas?

One thing that comes to mind is ringworm.

[Heathlingboots]

The vet hasn't done that.

The hair loss is interesting because there's no balding spots or even any areas where you can tell there's clumps of hair coming out. It looks as if he's not losing hair at all... the only evidence is the clumps that we find on basically any surface throughout the apartment.