Cat allergic reaction to food

Cat food allergy is an abnormal rejection reaction of the cat's immune system to specific food proteins. The core typical manifestations are recurrent unprovoked skin itching (frequent scratching of ears, biting paws/abdomen, repeated rashes, and black chin), chronic vomiting/soft stools, and can be significantly relieved by avoiding allergens for 2-4 weeks after eliminating parasites, fungi, and bacterial infections. The overall incidence rate is between 1% and 2%. Chicken, beef, and dairy products are the top three allergens.

Last month I met a doctor at the clinic who brought a two-year-old British Shorthair blue cat. The cat’s chin was bleeding from being scratched. The cat had otitis externa in its ears for almost half a year. It healed when I stopped applying medicine, but then it relapsed. The doctor said that he had been checked eight times for fungi and ear mites, and his food had been changed to so-called hypoallergenic products three times. He even changed the disinfectant at home, but it just wasn’t getting better. I asked her to list everything she had been fed in the past three months. Good guy, she had chicken breast as a snack every day and Shuhua milk twice a week. Finally, I did a food elimination test and stopped eating chicken and dairy products. After three weeks, I was completely fine.

Many people tend to confuse food allergies and food intolerances, but they are actually very different. To put it bluntly, intolerance means that it cannot be digested. For example, many cats have diarrhea after drinking milk. They are lactose intolerant and lack the enzyme to digest lactose. They will be fine if they switch to zero-lactose milk. It is a minor problem of the digestive system. Allergies are caused by the immune system playing tricks, just like the security guard in a community mistaking a visiting relative for an intruder and starting to fight. The inflammatory factors released are like batons in the hands of the security guard. If you swing them randomly, both the skin and the gastrointestinal tract will suffer. It is essentially an IgE-mediated type I hypersensitivity reaction. So sometimes you think it is a skin disease, but the root cause is actually in the food you eat.

When it comes to checking allergens, the pet medical community is actually quite noisy right now. One group supports serum-specific IgE testing. The results come out within two days of drawing blood. It can list the allergy levels of dozens of allergens. It is suitable for those who are usually too busy to put their feet on the ground and have no patience to test slowly. The other group thinks that the false positive rate of this thing is ridiculously high. I have seen many cats tested to be allergic to seven or eight kinds of food, but in fact, nothing happened after feeding them. They believe that the food elimination test is the gold standard - that is, feeding only a single protein source that the cat has never been exposed to before, such as venison and crocodile meat, for 8-12 consecutive weeks. To be honest, in the cases I have encountered, both methods are accurate and have pitfalls. Everyone can choose according to their own situation. There is no need to compete for superiority.

By the way, don’t think it’s an allergy just when you see a cat’s soft poop. Last week, a poop manager rushed over to ask for a hypoallergenic prescription food. He said that the cat had diarrhea for two days after changing the food. It must be an allergy. When I asked, I found out that the food was completely changed without any transition. It was just ordinary intestinal stress. I was prescribed some probiotics and took two days and it was fine. Real food allergies don’t just happen once in a while, they basically reoccur, and either skin problems or gastrointestinal problems linger for several months, and no other trigger can be found. The top 3 allergens currently encountered clinically are basically chicken, beef, and dairy products. Is it surprising? Many people feed chicken breast to cats every day to supplement nutrients, but little do they know that this stuff is the most susceptible to allergies. On the contrary, seafood that everyone thinks is susceptible to allergies accounts for less than 5%.

There are many opinions on how to feed allergic cats. Some people are looking for prescription hydrolyzed grains, saying that they hydrolyze proteins into small molecules that are not recognized by the immune system and are safe. But I have also encountered many cats with severe allergies who still itch after eating hydrolyzed food. Instead, they can make single-protein cat meals at home and eat happily without any problems. Some people think that cats with allergies cannot eat snacks. This is not necessarily true. As long as there are no allergenic ingredients in the snacks, it is perfectly fine to feed them occasionally. I have an old client whose cat is allergic to chicken and eats freeze-dried venison every day. It is so fat that it can hardly be held.

In fact, to put it bluntly, there really aren’t that many rules to follow when raising an allergic cat. I have seen cats allergic to salmon gnawing on canned beef every day and jumping around happily, and I have also seen cats allergic to corn live to 15 years old eating pure meat cat rice. The strategies are all dead, but the cat is alive. It is much more useful to observe its state after eating than to follow the list on the Internet. After all, when we raise pets, we have to follow the physique of our little master.