? Non diabetic cat but health dilemma.

[Shantismom]

I haven't been here since Shanti died 6 months ago but I know that the people here have a lot of experience
with different health issues so I thought I would see if there is any advice.
Sable is 6 years old, she was diagnosed last year with Eosinophil Granuloma Complex. This is an autoimmune disease which causes her to bite her hair off and even bite to the point of having sores form. This was diagnosed by a scraping of the skin. Her other problem is she has feline herpes which manifests itself primarily in her eyes.
The granuloma is treated with prednisolone, .25 ml every other day. The problem is that this causes some suppression of her immune system and results with ever increasing episodes of the herpes.
When her eyes are bad I skip the pred to give the antiviral a boost but with the increase of frequency of herpes, her granuloma has gotten worst and her stomach is now pretty much clipped short as well as some parts of her back legs from her biting. The vet is trying an antioxident to support her eyes. Sable is difficult to medicate but I have been able to give her the drops. The thing is her eyes both retain some pinkness, as though they cannot fully recover.
My vet wants to try something else instead of the pred but is waiting for some further results to come in to see if indeed this is a good replacement.
I don't expect anyone here to have had the exact same problem but wonder if anyone had two issues that conflicted with one another and if there is a solution. Perhaps someone has had some results with something other than prednisolone, or something that has really been successful for the herpes.

 

[Julia & Bandit (GA)]

.25 ml every other day is a very small dose of prednisolone, so I don't know what else your vet can do except increase the dose to get better control over the skin issues, or try a different steroid and see if it has less of an effect in aggravating the herpes. Unfortunately, you might have to make the decision to treat the skin issue first and let the herpes flare while the skin problem is resolving. I know the herpes is probably not comfortable for your cat, but it's not life threatening and probably less uncomfortable than the skin issues. You should also watch out for transient diabetes while she's on the steroid, because that is a more serious complication of steroids in cats.

My cat Gabby also had skin issues, and we eventually discovered it was being caused by a severe flea allergy. If she even got one flea on her, her skin would scab up long before we even detected the presence of fleas, so I had to proactively treat her and Bandit for fleas all year round. Another common cause of skin inflammations are food allergies--did you ever try a limited ingredient diet with her to see if that improved her skin at all? Just trying to think of other non-steroid options you might have to try and solve her issues.

My newly adopted cat Orpheus was diagnosed with feline herpes soon after we brought him home from the SPCA, and fortunately it seems to have mostly cleared up on its own. I'm not looking forward to the flare-ups that will likely present in the future.

 

[Shantismom]

When Sable first started with the skin problem we thought it could be a stress issue, then the vet thought maybe a flea bite but found no signs of fleas on her. Then she did a skin scraping and determined it to be this autoimmune disease. Sable eats fancy feast, the lower carb ones, because she is on a steroid I want to keep her on the lowest carbs I can and also keep her weight from going up. Her use of prednisolone will be long term in order to suppress the immune system enough so she won't bite. She is small and has a little bit of excess weight but we are working on that. It would be nearly impossible to take care of this cat if she should become diabetic. She is a maniac and will fight tooth and nail if any kind of confining is necessary to medicate. Right now I just give me the pred in her food and the eye drops she gets very quickly when she is relaxed. But the other thing is when she has had to have meds for more then a few days she starts to spend her life under the bed. For a cat who loves to be petted and fussed over a life under the bed would be an unhappy life indeed. That is why I am trying to be diligent with low carb food but I may try some limited ingredient food to see if that would help her skin. Do you know of a brand that is lower in carbs. Shanti had Natural Balance venison because that helped him with his IBD and the carbs were not sky high but there may be a better kind.
Thank you for taking the time to answer me and give me some ideas. I hate to see my little girl with these chronic problems and not have any idea what to do to help.

 

[Julia & Bandit (GA)]

Sure! I had to try a limited ingredient diet out with Bandit for a little while. We used Nature's Variety Instinct Limited Ingredient. They have three flavors: Duck, Lamb, and Turkey. There's a store locator on their website, or you can order it by the case from amazon. You'll probably want to get a few small cans first to see what she likes before ordering from amazon. All three are very low carb.