Food Allergy

[Heroherohero]

Hello,

I come to you at my wits end. I've been battling a food allergy my cat has for 2 years now - I'm still unsure what causes his allergy.

Recently, he had been on a food that worked great but had manufacturing issues that caused shortages for months and had to scramble to find a new something to give him. Tried switching him to raw food, but he would not eat it unless mixed with a food that triggered his allergies. I was hopeful that maybe just giving him a majority of raw food + a tiny scoop of the junky food would slow down his allergic reaction, but at this point I'm back to square one.

His allergic reaction is that he gets very itchy! It's almost as if he can do nothing BUT itch himself. He'll start chewing down his fur to the skin, then chew through his skin...

In desperation I searched for his old food again and found it at a much greater cost that I used to pay (I wouldn't say my financial situation is unstable, but I do struggle sometimes), but bought it anyway to stop him from gnawing on himself. Aaaaand... He won't eat it anymore. Great.

I just want what's best for him and want him to not suffer with this allergy anymore. So far there have been 3 foods that have worked very well for him, but I cannot feed to him anymore:

1) FirstMate Free Run Turkey Formula - Now refuses to eat pate
2) Natural Balance Duck & Green Pea Formula - Now refuses to eat pate
3) Lotus Just Juicy Turkey Stew for Cats - Manufacturing issues + now just refuses to eat

I guess I'm going to just move him completely to raw food for now and just pray it works...

He's currently eating the Rad Cat Raw Diet Turkey formula. I was wondering if anyone else has a cat that suffers from a food allergy? What steps did you take to discover this allergy? What foods work for you? Does your vet also refuse to give your cat an antihistamine shot (while my friends with dogs with food allergies just get the shot and go about their life carefree)? Maybe I should just try making my own cat food? Do you have any recipes?

 

[Furballsmom]

There is a recipe on catinfo.org.
there should be some experts here chiming in, as there are many cats with allergic reactions.
A lot of people did the process of elimination to try and pin down exactly what the trigger(s) is/are.
I'm so sorry you're going through this, I'm very familiar with finding something that works and then it doesn't.

 

[LTS3]

There are at least several members who have cats with food allergies such as cheeser

It's basically just a process of elmination of one ingredient at a time to determine what the cat is allergic to. For some cats, it's protein such as chicken. A raw or home cooked diet are great because you get to control the ingredients that go into the food. There are limited ingredient commercial dry and cat foods as well.

For recipies, the one at Catinfo.org is popular as is the one at Catnutrition.org For an easy diet, you can use a pre-mix such as EZComplete or TC Feline with boneless meat of your choice. There's mor info on raw and home cooked diets here Raw & Home-Cooked Cat Food

Article on Feline Cutaneous Adverse Food Reactions (aka food allergies) and treatment

 

[huxleysmom]

I have dealt with Huxley’s allergies from the moment I adopted him a little over a year ago. I know how frustrating this can be! I could not find anything in commercial foods that he did not react to. I did an allergy blood test, and he came back with lretty much allergy reactions to many all protein sources tested for but pork and rabbit. I decided to try raw, but he would not go anywhere near him, so I shifted to home-cooked (pork, with pork freeze dried pork liver and Alnutrin), but he continued to have reactions, mainly yucky ears and nausea. I then realized he could be havibg a reaction to egg so I removed alnutrin. And bingo! Egg was the culprit (and a false negative) on his test. I added fish oil to his food, and symptoms were coming back. So so far, I have establised through a very stict and thorough (at least 5 weeks on it only) that he reacts to all poultry including eggs, fish and fish oil, soy and peas. Home-cooked food is working well for him. He has no allergy reactions anymore, but because of IBD and chronic pancreatitis, nausea is still a problem at times, but that’s another story. If you are going to do homecooked, do it so that you only feed him one protein and nothing else for a few weeks (apart from supplements ) see how he does on that and then start adding things like fish oil or eggs, but only one at a time for a few more weeks and see what happens. It’s very important for you to be able to figure it out that you stick with one ingredient only at a time. Good luck!

 

[cheeser]

We and our vet thought it would be super easy to get our cat's food allergies sorted out, because he had only been eating chicken-based flavors for years. So if we just eliminated chicken from his diet, all of Buddy's symptoms should mystically and magically go away, right? Oops! It turns out that he's allergic to lots of other stuff, and has different symptoms for different allergies.

One of the things that's extremely helpful to me is to spreadsheet all of the ingredients for everything we give Buddy, or are even just thinking about trying, e.g., food, treats, meds, supplements, etc.

We also keep a journal where we write down EVERYTHING! Then if Buddy suddenly develops a particular symptom, we can go back and review our notes to see if we can identify a specific trigger. For example, for the longest time we couldn't figure out which ingredient in Buddy's food was causing his face to itch like crazy. The one day it finally dawned on us that the itching gets worse when I bump up his dose of egg yolk lecithin for hairball control.

We're still not 100% there, but we've made significant progress. Thankfully, our vet is okay with us using an OTC antihistamine while we continue to try to get this figured out.

Best of luck, and hope your fur baby is feeling better soon!

 

[Heroherohero]

Thank you all so much for your responses! Captain Kirk and I are about 1 week into his Rad Cat Raw Turkey diet, but so far... I feel like I come home to more tufts of fur he's scratched out of him every day (I might just be going crazy). Hoping to see more improvement over the next few weeks.

If I see nothing then I'm going to start him on a home cooked diet to clear his system, then slowly add in other items.

 

[Heroherohero]

I have dealt with Huxley’s allergies from the moment I adopted him a little over a year ago. I know how frustrating this can be! I could not find anything in commercial foods that he did not react to. I did an allergy blood test, and he came back with lretty much allergy reactions to many all protein sources tested for but pork and rabbit. I decided to try raw, but he would not go anywhere near him, so I shifted to home-cooked (pork, with pork freeze dried pork liver and Alnutrin), but he continued to have reactions, mainly yucky ears and nausea. I then realized he could be havibg a reaction to egg so I removed alnutrin. And bingo! Egg was the culprit (and a false negative) on his test. I added fish oil to his food, and symptoms were coming back. So so far, I have establised through a very stict and thorough (at least 5 weeks on it only) that he reacts to all poultry including eggs, fish and fish oil, soy and peas. Home-cooked food is working well for him. He has no allergy reactions anymore, but because of IBD and chronic pancreatitis, nausea is still a problem at times, but that’s another story. If you are going to do homecooked, do it so that you only feed him one protein and nothing else for a few weeks (apart from supplements ) see how he does on that and then start adding things like fish oil or eggs, but only one at a time for a few more weeks and see what happens. It’s very important for you to be able to figure it out that you stick with one ingredient only at a time. Good luck!

Thank you! I am curious about the blood test, as from the information my vet gave me it was as if my only options were to just try and find what's causing the reaction. Perhaps I need to call around and try a different vet!

 

[Heroherohero]

We and our vet thought it would be super easy to get our cat's food allergies sorted out, because he had only been eating chicken-based flavors for years. So if we just eliminated chicken from his diet, all of Buddy's symptoms should mystically and magically go away, right? Oops! It turns out that he's allergic to lots of other stuff, and has different symptoms for different allergies.

One of the things that's extremely helpful to me is to spreadsheet all of the ingredients for everything we give Buddy, or are even just thinking about trying, e.g., food, treats, meds, supplements, etc.

We also keep a journal where we write down EVERYTHING! Then if Buddy suddenly develops a particular symptom, we can go back and review our notes to see if we can identify a specific trigger. For example, for the longest time we couldn't figure out which ingredient in Buddy's food was causing his face to itch like crazy. The one day it finally dawned on us that the itching gets worse when I bump up his dose of egg yolk lecithin for hairball control.

We're still not 100% there, but we've made significant progress. Thankfully, our vet is okay with us using an OTC antihistamine while we continue to try to get this figured out.

Best of luck, and hope your fur baby is feeling better soon!

Thank you! This journal idea sounds great because I look at the lists of ingredients on the cans and just... Jeez. It's amazing that anyone has been able to narrow it down! But keeping track of it like that would definitely keep me on the right track. Do you have any pictures/screenshots of these journals and spreadsheets? I'd like to get an idea of where to start.

Also, it must depend on the cat, but I also tried to give my cat an OTC antihistamine, but... He's so smart! Just one lick and he spits out whatever he's eating.

 

[cheeser]

Thank you! This journal idea sounds great because I look at the lists of ingredients on the cans and just... Jeez. It's amazing that anyone has been able to narrow it down! But keeping track of it like that would definitely keep me on the right track. Do you have any pictures/screenshots of these journals and spreadsheets? I'd like to get an idea of where to start.

Also, it must depend on the cat, but I also tried to give my cat an OTC antihistamine, but... He's so smart! Just one lick and he spits out whatever he's eating.

I mostly use my spreadsheet to help me figure out which brands and flavors contain the same proteins or other ingredients. That way if Buddy has a problem with something, I can easily figure out which menu options I need to eliminate in one fell swoop. I don't know how to attach a copy of my spreadsheet, but if you're interested, I can e-mail it to you so you can get the general idea. Just PM me.

I use a plain ol' composition book you can buy pretty much anywhere to use as a journal. I use both the left and right pages for each day, and write the date in that big white space up at the top of the page. Then I draw lines down the pages to create columns.

I have these three columns on the left page:

Column 1: The time anything happens, whether it's when I feed Buddy, or when he peeps, poops, pukes, hacks up a hairball, when I first notice a particular symptom, etc.

Column 2: Which brand and flavor of food I fed him, how much he ate, about how many calories that was, whether or not he seemed enthusiastic about eating, and that sort of thing.

Column 3: Which meds and supplements I gave him, whether they're mixed in with his food, administered via a syringe, as well as eye drops, ear drops, foot soaks, or any other prescribed treatments.

Then I have these three columns on the right page:

Column 4: Where I note and describe any output, e.g., pee, poop, puke, or hairballs.

Column 5: Where I write down any other symptoms I notice, such as Buddy suddenly starting to scratch his face raw, shake his head, I see any hint of black gunk in his ears or around his toenails, etc.

Column 6: My 'misc.' column for anything else I think might be relevant, such as when I washed his bedding, when I changed the a/c filter, if the humidity is outside the range that seems to work best for him, if we brought anything new into the house that he might have contact with.

As for the OTC antihistamine, don't give up! You might want to ask your vet about using Claritin, or the generic equivalent. Of all the OTC antihistamines our vet has recommended, apparently Claritin doesn't have much of a taste, and is the only one I've been able to sneak into Buddy's food without him noticing.

 

[Furballsmom]

cheeser wow. just wow.

 

[cheeser]

cheeser wow. just wow.

Well, when you have a cat with multiple health issues, it helps if you can figure what what makes a problem better or worse. Plus, it give me a chance to keep up my cursive skills.