15/1 Chico OTJ update and allergies

Happy new year to everyone!
We wanted to share some updates from Chicoland and ask for an advice regarding a suspicion on allergies.
Chico is doing great (antijinx) he is still in good BG values, is purring, playing and preening (he’s purring right now next to me ). He still can’t thank you all enough for all the amazing help he got from this forum

We are still keeping him on an exclusively raw low fat diet. For a very long time he was on turkey meat only, since we concluded this was the best for his (undiagnosed) IBD. Just about a month ago we decided to try chicken again just to “spice it up” a bit.

Before we added chicken we noticed a little scratch above his eye, we dismissed it on him scratching himself, nonetheless after the winter holidays (we took him to a pet sitter for 3 weeks) we noticed a second bigger scratch-like mark under his chin. I started touching his ears and it seems there are some more little doted scratches there as well. The scratch above his eye didn’t heal. Can this be food allergies? We want to try switching to beef meat just to give it a try but there are not too many other options of stable source of exotic meats around here so now i feel a bit trapped
Thank you all for tour help

 

Chicken and beef (along with fish) are common allergens. Any chance you could copy a picture of the scratches to here? IBD allergies doesn't mean skin allergy to the same protein.

 

it was beef? i was certain it was pork... thanks for bringing this to my attention
you can barely see the scratches, this one is between his eye and his year and its been there for over a month. He has a bigger one on the neck but its impossible to take a picture of due to thick fur, you can feel it more than you can see it though.

 

i marked it for it to be seen better

 

I don't know anything but just want to say he looks SO soft!

 

Beef and poultry are common allergens. Some cats can be sensitive to fish, as well. I have an IBD kitty and use ground pork as a novel protein. I also mix it up with some canned foods -- ZiwiPeak venison or their lamb and rabbit. I have a hard time sourcing any other raw novel proteins -- although I did find venison today.

Several years ago my vet provided me with this information when Gabby was licking excessively and we thought it was due to allergy:

There are several options—there is a product called Allerderm which is applied once weekly to the skin which can be quite helpful for itchy or dry skin. Additional fish oil omega-3 fatty acids, 200-250 mg daily, are often helpful, but may take up to 2 weeks to really have an effect. Antihistamines are often helpful—we seem to have the best success with Zyrtec, which is over-the-counter, or hydroxyzine which is a prescription medication.

We have Allerderm here, but you may be able to order it online. Zyrtec dosage is ½ of a 10 mg tablet by mouth (in food…) twice daily, or about every 12 hours, try for 7 days. Watch for drowsiness or restlessness, although side effects from Zyrtec are not likely or are very mild. Use plain Zyrtec, or cetirizine, only—no combo meds. The fish oil product we use is AllerG3, or you can use human products.

If you opt for the Omega-3, Nordic Naturals has a version for pets -- they dropper in the bottle is calibrated. It's a high quality fish oil. If you are going to try Zyrtec, either coat the pill in butter or get blank capsules and put it in one of them. It can make your cat foam due to its being bitter.

 

Callie scratches herself on her face and neck a lot due to her food and environmental allergies. We were most successful in managing her food allergies when feeding her a prescription food w/ hydrolyzed protein but I'm pretty sure all of those are VERY high carb (the one she was eating just before her FD diagnosis is now our HC and is 35%!!) As you know, we recently changed Callie to a raw diet. We are currently feeding her ground pork, ground bison and ground venison (when we can find it.) Those all seem ok for her.

As far as supps/meds: we give Callie Omega-3, Zyrtec and also the prescription med Apoquel. But Callie's allergies are pretty severe and we haven't been able to identify all of her allergens. Hopefully, you'll find that switching up the protein you give Chico does the trick. So glad he is doing great otherwise!!

 

@Jessica A Which form of Omega-3 are you giving? I'm thinking about flax seed oil as an alternative to fish oils that can exacerbate allergies.

 

Haha, he does he is very cuddly after our vacation so we get to enjoy it even more

 

Thank you very much for your advice, we will start by trying omega-3, we will switch to pork gradually as well. I will look into zyrtec as well and check if i could source it here

 

Thank you Jessica for you advice, i really appreciate it your input, i know you are struggling with Callies allergies. Can you please tell me if her scratches look anything like that? Do they heal or are they “dried” scratches for a longer period?

 

We are giving Callie fish oil: Nordic Naturals Omega-3 Pet w/ wild anchovy and sardine oil. Callie is allergic to at least some kinds of seafood so I was nervous about fish oil for exactly the reason you mention. Our vet told me that most cats with fish allergies can still take fish oil because the amount of protein in the oils is so small. When I asked about alternatives like flaxseed oil, he said that he really prefers fish oil if Callie can tolerate it because fish oil has been found to have better anti-inflammatory effects in cats. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to trigger Callie's allergies.

I saw that you are going to speak with your vet about Adequan shots for Ruby. I think Adequan has really helped with Callie's arthritis. Hope it helps Ruby too!!

 

This is helpful, Jessica! I did not know about the protein in the oils. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the good wishes about the Adequan, I really hope it works for Ruby.

And sorry for hijacking your thread, Marina, hope you find a way of resolving dear Chico's skin condition.

 

Callie has had scratches that look a lot like Chico's (from what I can make out in the photo.) Although most heal pretty quickly, it really depends on whether she keeps scratching the same areas and reopening scabs. It can also take a while for the fur to regrow. Do you notice Chico scratching above his eye now?

You mentioned that Chico also has scratches on his ears. A common reason for ear infections in cats is food allergies and Callie had a few when we first adopted her and didn't yet know about her allergies. Whenever she had them, she would scratch and rub her ears like crazy so it might be worth looking inside Chico's ears if you haven't already.

 

I have a cat who gets similar scratches in that exact spot. She usually scratches them herself and she won’t stop until she gets a Depo-Medrol injection (I know, I don’t like it either!). She also gets these lumps on her abdomen that seem very scary (like tumors) but these also go away with the shot. I think I will try some of the other things mentioned here. I did try Zyrtec and several other antihistamines on another cat that I have with allergies and they only made him sleep all the time … so they kind of worked… because if he’s asleep he’s not licking and scratching! Anyway we stopped those antihistamines since we wanted him to be awake some time (cats already sleep enough on their own!). I hope some of these suggestions- or a new protein - will help Chico

 

i don't notice him scratching anymore and they don't heal we even tried to cut his nails to see if they would pass - of course he let us cut 1 nail and it wasn't enough for the experiment

no obvious infection in the ears, they seem pretty clean, how do ear infections look?

 

thank you Suzanne for sharing your experience, it gets me more puzzled, everyone talks about kitties scratching themselves a lot but i don't see him scratching himself in those places, they just don't heal he licks his belly like if there were no tomorrow though the belly licking got worse with the chicken though so i can't wait to switch

 

I would have the vet look at that place above his eye! Maybe you already did?

 

We still didn’t, i don’t know which of the vets we visited until now i would trust more… 1 year ago 2 of them proposed antibiotics as a “reset” of the gut microflora even though no bacterias were found … we will try the third one, even though her office is pretty far. Thank you Suzanne

 

Crazy. I just don’t get that. Unless they thought there was an intestinal overgrowth of bad bacteria for some reason? It sounds odd. I would have gone for the higher end probiotics instead perhaps. It’s so hard to get answers for these things that are out of the ordinary. I just would want to make sure it wasn’t anything that a vet would look at and spot something bad right away. Hopefully though, the dietary change will clear things up before you even have a chance to get to a vet!

Where did you go on vacation?

 

Sometimes they really don't help us help them!

Callie's ears would get pretty gunky with brownish discharge but I think there's a range of symptoms: yellow, brown or black discharge; some discharge is crumbly like coffee grounds; swelling/ redness in ear canal or on ear flap. There can be a strong odor coming from the ear. Callie would scratch at her ears a lot and also shake her head.

Food allergies can definitely cause belly overgrooming (though there are also other possible causes - flea/environmental allergies, cystitis or other pain in the belly area, stress.)

I agree with Suzanne that it is probably a good idea to have a vet look at the scratch that isn't healing if you can. And, as long as you are there, they can take a quick look in Chico's ears and give him that full manicure he refused at home

Really sorry about your experience with your prior vet - hope this new one is better.

 

Antibiotics here “solve” everything that doesn’t have an explanation
Unfortunately i don’t expect miracles from the diet change, we experimented for a very long time with 1 protein diets (turkey, pork, beef, chicken, rabbit) and up until now turkey worked best, so now going back to a protein that wasn’t better than turkey we just hope time changed something in his reaction to pork. Hopefully the vet will help us figure it out. Last time we saw one at the end of October and everything seemed fine, but 3 months can change a lot

We are an international type of family, one year we celebrate Christmas with my family and the other with my husbands family. This year was his family’s turn so we traveled to Portugal, can’t complain

 

Chico’s ears seem clean for now, no smell not discharge

The over grooming of his belly is not new, up until now we weren’t able to understand what is the cause, the closest we got to understanding was when we first switched to raw food he stopped licking for a while, since then i kind of started thinking it is the IBD. We will definitely go to the vet, wanted to hear all your opinions on allergies just to have a better understanding what to expect

thank you for sharing your experience

 

I enjoyed Portugal a lot when I was there. Beautiful and lovely weather (summer). I'm happy that you were able to travel. So great that Chico is OTJ!

 

Where did you go in Portugal? the entire country is very beautiful and the weather was very warm even now in the winter
Yeah, Chico being OTJ is amazing, its still difficult to find him a sitter because of the feeding regime (we still feed him 8 times a day exclusively raw) but now its only a matter of a lot of work around him without all the testing and shooting. We definitely try to enjoy, we know this doesn’t have to be forever