cats can have allergies...

Hi, I just wanted to share that I have a cat who has food allergies. A few years ago, I had no idea this was even possible. For some reason I thought only humans had allergies!

A couple of years ago, one of my cats had a low grade swelling around her lips for several months and she had a couple of sores underneath her chin. I was really puzzled as to what this could be. I started experimenting with different kinds of food and gave her some tuna fish. Well, then she really swelled up around her mouth! I then looked at the food that I had been giving her for the past few months and lo and behold, it had tuna fish in it. It was difficult to find something she could eat because she is also prone to UTI's. I put her back on regular food and the sores underneath her chin disappeared and so did the swelling. Unfortunately, she eventually ended up with bladder stones, so she then had to be on a special food which luckily did not have tuna in it.

To make a long story short, I also discovered she is allergic to Salmon. So the moral of the story is...Cats can have food allergies and if they are allergic to one fish, they are prone to being allergic to other types of fish...

 

Thanks for sharing this information. Like you, I hadn't given much thought to cat's having food allergies. Poor kitties, I suffer from food and hayfever allergies and know how it feels. Thanks for bringing awareness to this issue it might help out some fellow cat owners whose cats display similar symptoms.

 

Sorry to hear about your cat and allergies I also would like to thank you for sharing this. I had no idea cats could have allergies. I have been lucky, thus far, that none of my cats showed any signs of allergy whatsoever. However, from now on, I might just have to watch the three kitties I have right now. Zopie doesn't seem interested in wet food and that's about it. Other than that, he gobbles up his dry food like there's no tomorrow. I don't feed them any type of human foods for fear of indigestion problem.

 

Well, if you ever see an animal with allergies, if it's bad, it will probably be pretty obvious. After I fed my cat the tuna fish, her mouth was noticeably swelled. I KNEW something was wrong. I also wanted to mention that this same cat might have an allergy to rubber or something... I say this because I had been giving her water with a syringe a couple of times a day because of her bladder stones. It's important that a cat gets enough water if they get UTI's a lot and I cleared it with my vet. However, after a couple of months, I noticed that my cat had a sore on her mouth where I would syringe her. The syringe was made of nothing more than plastic and what looked to be a rubber stopper. I think she may have developed an allergy to that stopper. Once I discontinued syringing her with water, the sore disappeared. Luckily, her bladder stones have been under control (as far as I know), so for now, she seems healthy.

 

My best friend's family had a cat that eventually died from a disorder where he developed an allergy to all sorts of meats. He would be fine eating one thing, and then his body would develop a reaction to it. He would not be able to keep it down basically. It was very sad, because eventually he became allergic to almost every option for him to obtain protein. In the end I believe they had to put him down because he couldn't keep any food down and became weak from hunger. I never realized something that extreme could happen. They were feeding him every two weeks something different and trying to figure out a cycle where he could eat things. It got to the point they went shopping for rabbit, deer meat and other less frequently eaten things all for their cat. He'd been getting rather old so I suppose it was a matter of time before he started having medical problems. What made it most depressing was how much he really loved to eat, then he couldn't eat anything all of a sudden.

 

My cat Mouth has some food allergies but I never really pinpointed what he is allergic to. He never had the reactions your poor baby did. His came in the form of asthma. I just decided to eliminate all dry food and make his cat food. I found a great nutritionally complete recipe from a vet that basically is made up of chicken and some vitamins they need. Mouth hasn't had any asthma attacks since we started it!

 

Glad to hear it. It's a good thing you found a vet that can work with you. Sometimes I get the impression with vets that they only know what the cat food companies tout to them. If my cat develops further allergies, it's nice to know I might be able to find a vet to work with her diet.

 

Actually I got the recipe online at catinfo.org. My vet told me it would be impossible or near impossible to determine what Mouth was allergic to when I asked him about changing foods. Really annoyed me because as I have asthma and allergies I know that isn't true. I found the website while I was looking at cat food recipes. Most of the recipes and info out there made the whole thing just so complicated that I almost gave up before I found Patterson's site. Patterson has a wealth of info on her site and broke it down so the recipe is really very simple.

Good luck with your baby! I hope you can find a vet who is more interested in holistic approaches than mine was.

 

Oh, ok. Thanks. I've already bookmarked the site. Right now, my kitty is doing well, but if she develops further allergies, it's nice to know I can find information which could help her.