I have a cat with skin lesions...I think it may be an allergy???

Question

My three year old cat was so itchy two years ago and developed skinlesions that would scab and bleed. I took her to two separate vets. They did food trials, bloodwork, fleas negative, ringworm negative, ear mites negative, feline leukemia negative. They tried antibiotics, flea meds, and gave steroids for relief. To make along story short, before consenting to a biopsy or expensive allergy testing, I went to a local natural petfood store and got some different food. She has been perfectly fine for a whole year. Now, two weeks ago , she has started with the skin problems again. Anybody else have similar experience?? I have made appt. with vet next week but wonder if anyone has advice.

Answer 1

Pet food manufacturers are notorious for 'tweaking' their ingredients, and that can result in exactly what you describe. Check the label on the current food with one from an older bag to be sure. That's how we found out our cat was allergic to Rosemary Extract, it'd been raised up 3 lines in the Royal Canin Siamese and she suddenly broke out in little BB size bumps everywhere. A pair of cats on one of the lists I was on had the same issue and we saw it was the change made by the manufacturer that caused it.

Check for a diffrent food, if the current one isn't working anymore. It's sometimes all you can do with allergy prone cats. You don't want them on steroids for too long.

Answer 2

If she has food allergies, you may have to rotate out the main protein source every 6 months.. That's what I have to do with one of my dogs.. She's eats California Natural which has very limited ingredients and we rotate her between the lamb and chicken foods.. I would still take her to the vet though for a skin scraping and other tests just in case they do find something this time..

Answer 3

I don't know if this helps. We have a Pug dog that got something that sounded like that. He also got a really funky smell. They did the same with antibiotics and such. They said it was a fungis but, they did not know what caused it. I just kept on with the antibiotics, two runs and kept him really clean. It took months to go away but now he has been free of it for almost a year. good luck.