8 months ago, my husband and I adopted a 10 year old cat from the shelter. We got a catch 22 kind of problem. She has allergies and anxiety issues and it's hard to tell if she's chewing herself because she came into contact with an allergy or because she's overgrooming due to stress. She also has had FIC (feline idopatic cystisis - caused by stress) and putting a cone on her head triggers the FIC and enriching her life with supervised outdoor time which she enjoys and is supposed to help with the FIC possibly triggers her allergies. She has done really well on Primal raw pork and busprione hydrochloride until very recently and I can't figure out if it is because I went on a work trip or if she also has environmental allergies along with food allergies. The vet advised putting her on steroids, which I don't really want to do, but have run out of answers. Here are my questions:
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- Has anyone heard of buspirone hydrochloride (BH) becoming ineffective over time? She's been on it for 3 months. Prior to BH, we tried Prozac, which made her personality-less and mean (different for all cats and people I guess). She's normally very affectionate and playful. The buspirone hydrochloride combined with the pork diet worked for 8 weeks, but she started chewing on herself again = cone. The cone stresses her and my husband and I out. When I say she is chewing on herself, I mean I'm afraid that she will chew right through to her guts. I'm not kidding. She is obsessive and will hide from you and aggressively chew on herself. She also has had FIS (feline idiopathic cystitis, which is caused by stress) in the past. Of course, since we put the cone back on her she has peed on a chair and again right in front of me against a book shelf. She isn't in pain. I think she's pissed. Both of her boxes are currently lidless due to the cone. In terms of enrichment, we normally play with her every night, although right now, the minute you take the cone off she runs to hide to chew on her belly. I put a bird feeder right outside her favorite window. She has a room to herself. We have a food puzzle. And we are building her a cat-io (screened in patio for the cat)
- What about Atopica? I know it's a steriod designed specifically for allergies. We thought we had kitty's allergies under control, but now we are not so sure. We learned that she is allergic to beef (including dairy from cows) and fish. She has some problems with chicken, but not nearly as bad as with beef and fish. She eats Primal freeze dried raw pork formula and sometimes rabbit just to mix it up. She has done really well on this combined with the busprione hydrochloride until very recently. We are not sure if it's because I started letting her out in our backyard for short periods of time supervised (environmental allergies) or if she is stressed. I really don't know if immunotherapy, which takes 12 -24 months to work is a good plan considering her age and how miserable she is right now.
- I don't know if this is related, but kitty wakes me up every morning at 4:00 am. Any ideas on how to stop this. She will climb all over me. If I lock her out, she'll meow outside the bedroom door. I don't want to stress her out further buy pushing her away, but I also need to sleep.
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Benadryl is not safe for cats!
feels better soon!
