ongoing allergy

[MasternMargo]

We have an F2B Savannah named Master that has always seemed to have an allergy to something. He is now almost 2.5 years old and has had this problem his whole life, although it comes and goes. He normally has a reaction about once a week or so. Sometimes its kind of bad, other times is relatively mild.

When he's having a reaction he develops a red rash inside of his ears and a little on the top of his head. He seems to be really itchy during this period. If he defecates during this time he does have a little prolapse that goes away within a few minutes. Normally he is like this for 4-6 hours and its not specifically right after he eats, its at random times.

Later he will develop small bumps on his chin and under his ears. These bumps are kind of like white dry skin clumps that he scratches at until it pulls the clump out with a small patch of fur.

The last stage occurs only occasionally and ends up being dark freckles at the inside base of his ear. These will go away after about a week of no bad reactions.

We have tried to narrow down his allergy but were looking for a second opinion on what to do. So far we have:

Used a glass bowl for food and water.
unscented cat litter (we also tried chicken feed, its kinda like Worlds greatest Cat Litter)
we use sensitive skin unscented dryer sheets, and detergent.

We feed him a raw diet of:

Mix: Chicken Breast, chicken quarters, chicken necks, gizzards, and use a juicer to get finely grated butternut squash, sweet potatoes, carrots.

we also feed him: albacore tuna, salmon, shrimp.

His sister eats the same food and has no allergic reactions.

I figured we can cut out tuna, salmon and shrimp; but were wondering if anyone had any other ideas on what may be causing this allergy, or have any experience with allergic cats and how to treat them.

Has anyone had success with diagnosing allergies using a blood test? I took him to a vet that said I should stop feeding him raw chicken, and did a fungus/bacteria test for ~350!

Thanks,

Kat and Shawn w/ Master n Margo

 

[Brigitte Cowell]

Chicken can indeed be a source of allergies...if you look at the commercial "limited ingredient" diets that are made for cats with allergies they use things like venison and duck and rabbit. Rabbit is an easy transition in raw food btw...at least with my cats.

There are vet immunology specialists, I'd probably consider trying to find one close to you... expensive but getting to the cause of this would be worth it...

 

[DocMac]

We took our F4 make to the vet school at Virginia Tech and let the students have a go at him. His entire problem began when he got a can of Fancy Feast as a treat one time. It was seafood of some sort(I can't remember). He got the skin symptoms and leaked anally for months. He slept a lot, too. they started him on an allergy detection program that eliminated all but a prescription canned Science Diet food. Two weeks after, he seemed normal and we began adding simple foods to his diet one at a time with weeks in between.
Now, he eats everything BUT seafood of any type. He has a partial mild reaction to beef, but chicken is the one type of food that has no problems. He eats Blue Buffalo kibble out all the time, raw chicken thighs, cooked de-boned chicken and Royal Canin canned kitten food.(he's 5 now LOL)
He's fine and the cat love of my life.
The vet school wasn't as expensive as my regular vet and Djembe was their first experience with a Savannah.

 

[MasternMargo]

Thanks everyone for your responses. We took him to a few different vets before, even went to dermatologist, but haven't done any tests which would help us to narrow down what he is allergic to. We tried different dry and canned foods, but they are so used to raw, they wouldn't even touch anything else, except for shrimp and fish. We decided to eliminate seafood for now, but I added some cooked turkey and turkey gizzards, which they both gobbled down happily

 

[Patti]

I also had a cat that had those odd freckles in her ears - they would get bigger or smaller but would never go away. I had her on a limited ingredient diet but not sure if it really helped. I took her to an allergy specialist and his recommendation was to NOT test for allergies since she would undoubtedly come up positive for dozens of allergens (very common with all cats) so would be no closer to an answer. I treated her with chlorpheneramine and that did seem to help.