? Food allergies

There is always a lot of talk about food allergies with our kitties but how exactly do you know? I question my civvie Buddy. He has what I call bouts of vomiting and then seems perfectly fine in a day or two. He will vomit after he eats (not a scarf and barf thing) say at two feedings, and then turn his nose up to food because it makes him feel bad and then the next day or day after that he's fine. I brought him to our IM vet and she did an abdominal ultrasound and saw very slight wall thickening of the pancreas. She ordered the blood tests (Cobalamine/Folate/PLI to Texas A&M and everything came back normal.
I'm to weight Buddy every week for the next month to ensure he's not losing weight. His records indicate a little bit of weight loss but its all different scales so I will use our scale at home to see what's what. I have a calendar just for him now where I can make notes of any occurrence of vomiting so I can keep a better record of when and how often. I do give him 1/8tsp of Miralax every other day. He wasn't constipated but his stool seemed borderline dry and I want to keep things moving along nice and easy.

So I've questioned could he be allergic to one of the foods we feed. Right now I'm only using FF chicken&liver and FF turkey&giblets. Since the vet trip on 6/26 he's been totally fine. Could a protein affect them just sometimes? How does a food allergy present itself, vomiting, diarrhea, coughing, itching?

We took this little cutie in March 2017 and estimate he's about 5 or 6 years old.

 

He is a cutie. Allergies can show up in different ways. Gradually, Willow was losing hair from her back legs and tail. It happened so subtly that it took a long time before we really even noticed. The main protein in their food at the time was turkey, so I switched to a food with chicken. Her hair started growing back, and once it was all back in, I realized just how much she had lost, and I felt bad that we did not notice sooner. My sister's cat had poop issues. Sometimes he would have stinky, soft poop, then other times, he would go days without pooping at all. The vet had her switch him to only rabbit to see if that would help, if perhaps the poop issues were allergy/sensitivity to the proteins he had been eating. After a little while on the rabbit, the poop issues were gone.

I fed my girls FF Classic Chicken when I was first transitioning them to wet food because it was one of the only ones they would eat. I started noticing issues with their poop; they would go days without pooping or when they did it was so small and hard, even darker than what I considered normal. I was adding water to the food and started adding a little pumpkin, too. I also noticed weird little things like the hair on Mia's chin and above her eyes thinning a little, and her scratching those areas to the point that she had a couple of little sores. Willow ended up having an anal sac rupture (which is horrible!) because her anal sacs were not being properly expressed by her poop. I decided then to never feed FF again. There have been none of these issues since I switched them to Weruva. In this case, the protein is still chicken - that was not the problem - I believe it was some of the other ingredients in the FF food. Once I started really digging in and researching it, I found that the FF had some less than ideal ingredients.

My girls used to vomit fairly often, to the point that I had come to think it was just their 'normal'. It seemed to get worse on the FF, especially for Willow. Now that they are eating the Weruva, it has been so nice to not have to deal with vomit all the time.

 

I was here a while ago when my kitty Leo had diabetes (I guess he still does but he went into remission when I switched to canned food.) He has IBD so there were a lot of foods he couldn't eat at all. Chicken and fish were the worst offenders. It took me so long to find a food he wasn't allergic to and that he was ok with along with his IBD. Since I switched him to a limited ingredient grain free canned duck food his allergies have subsided a lot and he rarely vomits anymore. I gave up on any of the prescription foods and found other commercial foods that had better ingredients. Vomiting and skin issues can be one sign of allergies and of course having IBD doesn't help but some specialists feel that IBD may be caused by food allergies to begin with. Leo's inflammatory markers are now within normal limits.

 

Thanks for the responses! I think I'm going to experiment and stick with one protein at a time and see if I can figure out a culprit. Buddy threw up this morning after his 9am fuds. I keeping notes on everything now so hope to get to the bottom of it.

Thank you

 

Stick with it, and good luck. It takes a lot of patience for sure. I felt like pulling my hair out at one point in exasperation .

 

Truffles is allergic to grain so has a grain free diet. His skin obviously starts to itch as he would lick himself raw. He also had the runs. Once I stopped grain it really helped.

 

I say that Cleo is allergic to turkey. i don't know if that is technically true, but I do know that she vomits if she eats something with even the tiniest trace of turkey. That was what brought on the pancreatitis that (probably) led to her becoming diabetic. Poor Cleo!

Paddy, my civvie, is sensitive to something. I think it's beef and maybe also some fish. I can't figure it out, but he vomits a lot and his ears are bald. I've just eliminated beef from his diet to see if that helps. He would be happy to eat nothing but kibble. He has done fine with that for years, but I'd really like to get him onto a canned diet, since that is what Cleo is eating.

 

My daughters cat has an allergy and she gets very itchy and gets watery eyes but the vet doesn't think it is a food allergy as she is fed a raw home made diet.
If you suspect a food allergy they say the best thing is to try a novel (new to the cat) protein for the cat. For example if he has not had lamb before try lamb, or if he hasn't had rabbit before try rabbit. One novel protein at a time though. My vet told me when I suspected Sheba had a food allergy that she would have to stay on the new food for several months to know if the food had caused an allergy. She had very loose poops. I changed her over to a completely raw diet and the loose poops went away almost immediately after having had them for months.

 

This seems odd to me. Why does the vet not think it could be a food allergy? What if she is allergic to something in her 'raw home made diet'?

 

Because it comes and goes and is mainly from April to August and she is ok the rest of the year. Also she withdrew a couple of the meats she had started just before the allergy appeared and that made no difference. They have since been put back into the diet and she is fine with them, except for the months I mentioned.

 

Hmmm, seasonal allergies then. Sounds like half a Zyrtec each day might help with that (also tends to increase appetite). I have to give that to my Willow. She sneezes and gets sniffles, like a person with allergies to something like pollen or dust.

 

Yes she gets a half a Zyrtec every day during the allergy months. It makes a huge difference. My daughter is getting her tested to see if they can find out what it is she is allergic to.

 

Hello, have you found out the reason behind this allergy problem your kitties are getting affected by? I remember my kitties had been through the allergic reactions during every rainy season, then after consulting with the doctor they found some flea and mite bite in the ears of kitten so they are getting infected with the viral infection by fleas. Thus suddenly my dad took decision to contact to the best pest exterminator like Flea exterminator NYC and get the whole house done with a pest controller to control the fleas at home. So likewise you also find out the reason behind kitten getting allergic reactions.

 

It definitely can be a food issue and a novel protein is the way to find out. You need t read the labels carefully though. For example, ff turkey contains poultry giblets which means it could be chicken. One of my young civvies has eosinophilia granuloma. It shows up as red nodules on her lips. I’m on my 4 th protein with her, duck. My vet said keep to one for 2-3 months. She was good for over a month but now one has returned either from a bite of her sister’s chicken or her condition is caused by something else. You need to pick a protein never eaten before for a food trial and it can take minimum of two months. I hope you figure it out.