This will be a royal pain but you might try home made food for a while. Then
you control the ingredients. After a couple of weeks you should be able to
tell a difference if you are right about the allergen. Believe it or not home
made is not that much more expensive than bought---just more of a pain.
If you have men who will
exclude any of God's creatures
from the shelter of compassion
and pity, you will have men who
will deal likewise with their
fellow man.
St. Francis
----- Original Message -----
From: Gary Murphy
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, January 01, 2007 1:01 PM
Subject: Re: OT: food allergic cat
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
