HAPPY NEW YEAR, CAT PEOPLE!!! Thank you everyone for the responses to my food allergy question. I forgot you're all on vacation, I put my question out there and then left to get ready to visit friends for New Years Eve, y'all answered back right away and I wasn't home to read it... I'm pretty sure my vet said he didn't have a good way of testing for food allergies. :-( I'll question him on this again tomorrow, a simple blood test would be wonderful. I suspected a seafood allergy, (their wet food was Friskie's seafood flavors, not good but I was sick of throwing out untouched plates of EVO). The first food we tried when he started scratching was Wysong's "Anergen" lamb and rice, which is supposed to be hypoallergenic. It contains even more unusual ingredients than Wellness, including sage, rosemary, garlic, black pepper, and artichoke, plus they won't eat it. Innova Evo includes fish meal or herring as an ingredient. It is very difficult to find any food that doesn't. The best we could come up with over the counter was to find one without whole fish, but just fish oil as an ingredient further down the list. Thus the Wellness. I like the ingredients in the California Natural that Phaewryn suggests, nice short simple list without fish ingredients, but it says "ADULT CAT FOOD" in big letters across the front so I've always put it back. Four of my five are only 9 months old, I was committed to feeding a higher calorie kitten food until they are one year old, but maybe I'll have to bump up that time-line in light of Scooter's problem. I guess we'll try the Hill's prescription diet next, and then go from there, homeopathic if the diet doesn't work... Just as an aside, he is tolerating the collar really well. Our big girl bully Blue is afraid of it, he has realized this and is trying to establish dominance over Ms. Nasty. She kept going after Will and Dash the other night, Gary jumped out of bed twice to break up fights, finally she pinned one of them in the laundry room 'til they cried. Gary decided three times out of bed was enough, tried to catch her to lock her up in the spare bedroom for the night, she started running all over the front room with Gary right behind, and then Scooter decided to join in the chase. That collar is his Superman cape, gives him all the confidence he needs when dealing with Blue... :o)
Thank you all again for the good advice, I'll let you know how it goes, Beth
