When Cats Have Allergies

If your cat scratches herself a lot, tearing out fur and even skin, and other possible causes have been ruled out by your vet, consider environmental or food allergies as the possible culprit. Any cat scratching repeatedly, especially to the point of self injury, can be checked for a variety of possible causes by your veterinarian. Your vet will discuss your cat?s environment, habits, food and examine the scratched area(s) to help determine the ultimate cause.

Fur around the affected area may be clipped, tests run, and medicine applied or sometimes injected. You will probably also be given homework: special instructions on home care. The three usual culprits requiring veterinarian diagnosis and clinic care followed by home care are:

• Allergic dermatitis -- Cats can develop skin allergies (allergic dermatitis) to flea bites, food, house dust, pollens, and other substances in their environment, just like humans!
• Contact irritant dermatitis -- could be caused by almost any type of chemical product that touches the skin. It could be the flea collar or pet shampoo or something less obvious.
• Ringworm fungal infections -- can be contagious to young children and require very thorough house cleaning using special products.

Allergies Get Personal

Glory, our 8 year old Bengal, was scratching herself behind and below her ears until the fur was flying and her skin was torn. The information in this article is based on our experiences of solving and treating Glory?s problem.

After other possibilities were eliminated, we began the Glory food allergy hunt. This technique is called an "elimination diet" and is sometimes used for humans to ascertain food and additive related allergies, too.

I have allergies to a few foods and food additives myself, so this explanation of allergies is based on my experiences, reading medical literature and talking to my allergy specialist. An allergen is the name given to whatever substance induces an allergic reaction. An allergic reaction for me can be hives, itching, a red rash, or trouble breathing. For Glory, her allergic response was scratching furiously at two discrete areas on her body near her neck. Allergies are developed by initial exposure to the irritating substance, followed at a later time by other exposures. The first exposure may or may not produce an allergic reaction, but subsequent exposures will produce a reaction, and these reactions can potentially increase in severity with repeated exposures.

For me, the best treatment is reading all food labels carefully so I do not buy anything that has one of my allergens as an ingredient. I also keep Benedryl, an Epi-pen, and activated charcoal handy in case I accidentally ingest a previously unknown allergen.

The Process Of Elimination

We took Glory completely off her regular dry and canned foods and started her on dry and canned special prescription only foods produced by Innovative Veterinary Diets (IVD) made primarily of duck and potatoes. The idea was to give Glory a well-balanced diet of food products that she has probably never eaten before as her regular diet. As duck and potatoes are something she had never had before, it was highly improbable she would have developed an allergy to it. This would allow her body a chance to heal and to enable us to test different and very basic foods to see what she could tolerate and what she reacted to by scratching herself.

Glory did not like the canned food at all, so we were able to return the cans to our vet for credit against the purchase of future IVD foods. By keeping Glory on this new food for about 5 weeks, we hoped to eliminate any residual allergens in her system from the old foods. Our first job was to test for protein allergies by giving Glory different very basic protein sources without any additives. After 5 weeks on IVD, we carefully introduced about 1/2 ounce of cooked chicken daily for 3-4 weeks to see if she had any negative reaction. Glory just said "More please!" So far, so good. Then we added cooked turkey bits to her diet. This produced happy growls and purrs and "Paws off my food!" Fish is problematic in our home due to human allergies and food preferences, so none was offered to Glory. The bad news came when we introduced beef. Within 5 days she was scratching again. Conclusion: no more beef for Glory!

I had cooked enough chicken and turkey for us humans and then froze tiny portions in an ice cube tray, finally putting them in a plastic bag. This way, I did not have to cook chicken every two days for many weeks! Any meat offered to her was completely unseasoned and no broth was included. We even tried first offering white meat, then dark meat from each type of poultry to see if dark meats would induce her to start scratching.

I also kept two groups of labels: one from cans and bags of cat food that Glory ate with no problems and another of those she reacted to by scratching after eating. By creating a diff file -- a list of the ingredients that are unique to each group of foods -- we were able to discern a pattern.

Glory hasn't scratched herself in months and she continues to eat IVD's duck and potatoes, as well as a senior canned cat food containing a variety of lamb, rice, chicken and turkey. We still watch her for any signs of allergies, introducing the senior canned foods as carefully as we did the cooked chicken and turkey. Glory enjoys her occasional treats of home cooked unseasoned chicken and turkey, too.