Anyone using Atopica?

Great news about Taz!

And yeah - beautiful photo, Nekochan!

BTW - your Zazu is just beautiful too! She looks just like our Little Dot - one of the outside ferals.... except Little Dot has one little dot of white on her chest. :lol3:

Hi there,

My cat Keeta suffers from skin allergies and has for the last two years. She gets raised bumps with scabs all over her body and licks all of her fur off of her. The vet has been treating her with depo shots but it only seems to clear her up for no longer than two months at a time. I am concerned with the depo treatment due to my cats age. Keeta is 15 years old and unfortunately my vet can not for some reason seem to get any delivery of the liquid form of Atopica for felines because it is not available yet. I am just curious as to how others are getting it if it is not being supplied yet. I feel so bad for my precious Keeta because this skin allergy has made her miserable. I am desperate to get my hands on this Atopica so I can start treating her to see if it will make any difference.

Oh by the way I have three wonderful girls! By order, Keeta, Jerrica and Seiki.

Interestingly, when I got the Atopica from my vet (it's liquid) I had to take the amount they had left in the building, which was only two weeks worth - they had called in my cat's prescription and was told by the supplier that Atopica was on back order and they didn't know when it would be available. I would send you mine since my cat won't tolerate it, but I had given her two doses so the syringe has been in her mouth. My cat vomited severely on it, and the vet's response was to keep giving it to her until she can tolerate it. At that cost why would I! She was extremely stressed out by the dosing, too. She still has a massive rodent ulcer on one side - a stand-in vet that covers for mine was dead set against a Depo shot, she wanted to try dexamethasone. It had absolutely no effect. I will probably bring her in this week for some kind of shot - either the tried & true Depo, or I may try another dexamethasone to see if it starts to help. I hate using the depo because of the diabetes potential, but so far it's the only thing that has worked.

btw, your cats are all quite beautiful! I especially love the eyes on the first one!

My kitty has dermatitis and her vet put her on Atopica. She hypersalivated every time i gave her directly in her mouth. Refused to eat her food when Atopica was mixed with it. So today her vet recommended the capsule one used for dogs. The formulation is the same. He told me to give her 1 pill a day (25 mg). I gave it to her tonight after she ate to avoid stomach upsetting.
I rubbed a tiny bit of butter on the pill and put in the back of her mouth. She swallowed easily and no drooling- yay!
I want to mention that this vet is a dermatologist vet. This is the only thing he does. So, I trust he knows about dosage.
If all goes well, we may adjust the dosage accordingly ( instead of everyday, she may take it every other day or every 3 days).
The other alternative is prednisolone which is well tolerated in cats.
Good luck to you and kitty! You may want to check if there is a dermatologist vet in your area.

OK.

Finally I have my cat on Atopica! Don't get too excited yet because my poor girl Keeta is having some issues with it. My cat keeta is 15 years old and also suffers from dermatitis. Because of her age the depo shots just is not a long term solution.

Keeta has been taking Atopica for almost a month. I am experiencing problems with vomiting, diarrhea and drooling. This medication is a very strong medicine and tastes absolutely terrible. She gags the minute it hits the back of her throat. The initial dosing was way too much so we tapered her dose up from a 3 pound dose and increased it each week. It seemed the higher the dose we gave her the more of a chance that she vomited after her dose. I have her on an 8 pound dose right now and she is 13 pounds so her dose is still under the recommended dose for her weight. The good news is that it is working, she has no yucky crusties on her body and her hair is starting to come back from where she licked it all off. Also I forgot too mention that I have started reducing her doses to every other day and may even try giving her a twice a week regimen with the Atopica.

The Bad news is that if I can not get her vomiting and diarrhea under control we may have to stop the treatment with Atopica. We are going to try a sensitive stomach food and also give her a vitamin supplement called Nutri Cal. As far as the drooling goes, the only time she has problems with drooling is if i don't get the dose down her throat. In other words if she squirms alot and I get the medication in her mouth instead of her throat she drools and it's quite heavy drooling for a good 5 to 10 minutes. I will make sure that I keep posting Keeta's progress so that maybe through communicating with each other we can hopefully find out what works best for our babies!

This is too bad. It's actually the first time I hear of kitties not being able to handle Atopica. I know several kitties on it doing very well. But definitely ALL medications have crazy side effects. I know how frustrating it is to hope that something is going to help and it does the opposite. Believe me I do! My poor Alex had a reaction to just about everything I tried with her.

Atopica for asthma...  It's great to see Atopica working for skin issue.  Charlie has fairly sever asthma.  Steroids made him diabetic but changing him to a very low carbohydrate diet has him in remission.  So he's now on Atopica for Asthma which is handling it.  I'm juts wondering if anyone else has their cat on Atopica for asthma and what the results have been.  Especially long term use since it looks like he will be on it forever.

Hi, I have a cat who has to be on daily maintenance for her rodent ulcers that she gets on her mouth.  They had her on steriods, but she can not be on them her whole life since she is only 4 so we put her on Atopica which works very well.  It is difficult to use, so wouldnt take it in the treat, hard to put it in her mouth so we used the liquid.  She wouldn't touch anything, we used it with Sardines and still nothing.  Now what I do, is I put her in the bathroom with me, and I give her the medicine orally.  I found by putting her in a contained room it created less of a panic and more of a calming experience.  At first she didn't sleep with me for days, but now doing that she sleeps with us every night again.  Sometimes though I wrap a hand towel to keep her arms down, but you have to do it quickly.  Then I let her calm down after I administer it, with me in the bathroom with her, and I clean up and put everything away.  I then let her out when she is not in a panic and we are good to go.  This is the only thing that works for us, my cat panics a lot when it comes time to grooming or with medicine.

My kitty has been struggling with what has been diagnosed as allergies for over a year now.  It started with vomitting up her food (she was eating IAMs indoor at the time).  From there, she was diagnosed with food allergy.  The issue has escalated since then to practically mutilation.  She has bald bloody spots on several areas of her body as well as enormous black scabs in certain spots she scratches often with her claws.  She is clearly suffering and uncomfortable.  She began seeing an animal dermatologist about 3 months ago when my vet was out of idea.  She been on a home-made diet for three months and she has been taking Atopica for almost a month at .2 ML.  Our dermatologist has just suggested increasing the dose to .25 ML per day recently, but she showed zero improvement from the previous dosage.  Why am I to expect this would be any different?  Has anyone had any success with Atopica for chronic allergies?  I'm seriously worried because she has began urinating near her food and water bowl and in her bed.  All her blood work and urine samples come back clean and again her dermatologist and vet are completely stumped.    Anyone have a similar experience?  Any words of encouragement about your similar experiences would at least ease my mind.  I feel so helpless right now to helping my precious girl.

My cats have been fighting the Atopica even more since we switched to the "brand name" liquid rather than compounded cyclosporine (generic), I m having so much trouble getting them to take it, or sometimes Mr Grey starts drooling so I don't know how much actually goes down, etc...I have two cats on it now. My vet asked if it was bitter and said sometimes people have luck mixing bitter meds with Ensure. That didn't work for us but I was curious so I touched a tiny bit of the Atopica liquid that had dripped, then touched my finger to my tongue to see how it tasted. It was horrible, I can see why they hate it so much! I had to rinse my mouth out a bunch of times to try to get rid of the taste from that tiny bit. They should market this stuff like Bitter Apple.

We have a black male Siamese-mix we adopted from the Humane Society shelter about seven years ago.  Mickey has had allergies and raw "lick-spots" since he's been with us.  The last round of the lick-spots or hot-spots started over a year ago and recently we were sure we were about to lose him when it got so bad he was biting his open sores on his belly and bleeding profusely.  He had a large, deep scratch spot on his head that was bleeding and well into the underlying tissue and the belly spot was a little larger than a dollar bill.  We had tried just about everything several regular vets and a holistic vet could think of over the last few years.  He had been wearing an Elizabethan Collar (affectionately termed "the bucket") for nearly a year.  In short, we were out of options and our lives were becoming nightmarish.

Then, while desperately seeking any reasonable solution, we found a vet who dosed him hard with antibiotics (Covenia), steroids (Vetalog), and started him on Atopica for cats.  Almost immediately, he quit scratching the open head wound.  Within two weeks, he wasn't wearing the collar any longer, and after about five weeks now, the head wound is skin-covered and growing hair, and the belly wound is reduced to something a little bigger than a quarter.  The Atopica is holding him now and shrinking the remaining sore on the belly daily.  This stuff is marvelous!!

As anyone else who has tried it will tell you, it must taste awful !!  Thankfully, I read a post on this site suggesting that you administer the Atopica via syringe with some baby food to cover the taste and make the experience something the cat looks forward to instead of running from (poor grammer, but you get the idea).  The technique is to use either Turkey with Turkey Gravy baby food or the chicken equivalent.  When you pull the dose up into the syringe, then dip it into the baby food and pull up about a half to three quarters of an inch of the baby food into the syringe.  This will cover the initial taste so the cat doesn't reject it.  However, the taste will still prevail if you don't follow the squirt of baby food and Atopica with a heaping half teaspoon of the baby food for him to lick up immediately (and I mean nearly stick it in his face as soon as the Atopica is squirted in).  If you follow this routine, your cat will actually look forward to the daily event and your life and his will dramatically improve!

Atopica works wonders if you can deliver the dose reliably for a long-ish period.  The dose is 0.032 ml per pound of weight - the syringe is labeled by pounds, so it's easy to figure out. No guess-work.

Good luck.

Relieved in Desert Hot Springs

I rambled a bit, so I tried to break this post up with some colors! I was happy to find this forum! 

CharliesDad said:

Atopica for asthma...  It's great to see Atopica working for skin issue.  Charlie has fairly sever asthma.  Steroids made him diabetic but changing him to a very low carbohydrate diet has him in remission.  So he's now on Atopica for Asthma which is handling it.  I'm juts wondering if anyone else has their cat on Atopica for asthma and what the results have been.  Especially long term use since it looks like he will be on it forever.

Click to expand...

Aurora also has severe asthma. I've been trying to get her off of steroids to avoid diabetes. We're getting there, but have been tapering her at a snail's pace. Well,  she had been taken off of prednisolone a couple times and within a few weeks, I was rushing her to the vet or the emergency vet, due to very fast breathing. I'd also love to know if anyone has had their cat on Atopica for asthma for an extended period of time. Aurora has been on it for about a month and a half and no noticeable side effects. But since we've been monkeying with the pred, who knows if the Atopica is even doing anything. Her breathing was still trying to be tamed with the pred while introducing her to the Atopica. She's had a bit of a bumpy ride.

I'm miserable without my playpal and she simply will not play while on the prednisolone, so I'm hoping to have her off of it in the next couple weeks. Plus, she's gained a bunch of wait from not being that active. Plus, all this medicine giving makes her hide from me now and then, so it's tough to see her not trust me. But, she still sleeps on my lap, so she can't hate me totally!

So, regardless of what they're being treated for, has anyone had their furball on Atopica for over a year? How is it going?

I've just joined this site which I searched to find where I could buy Atopica.   I've been getting it from Drs. Foster and Smith, but they've changed their delivery channel, and my package has gone missing - an expensive issue for me.  In any case I've used Atopica in capsule form for a few years on one of my cats who has severe dental/oral issues and may have to have all his teeth removed; he is 7 years old.     Another one of my cats age 14 has just been put on the drug as well; however, neither has a skin problem or known allergies although the latter cat may have them and will soon be tested for food/environmental allergies.

May I suggest if your cats have difficulty swallowing the bitter liquid that you try the capsules?  The strength that I use is 25 mg which, of course, has to be shoved down their throats, but at least it's reassuring that they are getting the medication, not vomiting it back up.   I've been paying $55.50 (free shipping) for 30 doses although I do not plan on returning to Drs. Foster and Smith since they no longer have Fedex deliver the package directly to me unless the post office, which now receives from Fedex, can find my medications.   I hope this helps.

I am replying to my own message about Atopica to let you know that the mail truck delivered the package two days early to the other building in my complex.   I have been using Drs. Foster and Smith for Atopica for a few years for the one cat with severe oral/dental issues (and a dentistry every 6 months) and am now starting with the 14 year old cat with respiratory issues which may be allergies or asthma - an ultrasound and rhinoscopy were conducted - no cancer or growths.

I think for anyone whose cat makes faces or won't eat the food due to the bitterness of the liquid medication, try the capsules.   Thank you.

Please be advised this is an old thread. If you require answers about a problem with your cat, you will get better response if you start your own thread. Thanks.

I would so love any leftover Atopica anyone might have. I have a tight budget and my kitty really needs it. I rescued some kittens whose Mom got hit by a car and the Humane society wouldn't take them until they were eating solid food. So I bottle fed them but my kitty was such a good Mommy she'd jump in the box and let them nurse on her. They scratched her with their dirty little junk yard claws and she got a horrible rash from it that spreads to her whole body. as soon as the cortisone wears off it comes back. They of course tried a couple of antibiotics and they didn't work. I'm so upset and feel so much guilt that if I hadn't rescued this litter my kitty would never have gotten whatever it is she has. In my mind it must be a pathogen that can be killed but the vet thinks its that Eosinophilic Granuloma. (sp?) If ANYONE has any ideas about my situation please post. The Atopica works for her within 24 hours. Its amazing. They want her on 8cc but I am going to try low dosing her and giving the lowest dose that works.8 seems like alot to me.

Thank you so much for sharing your ideas and any un-used Atopica you might have. Aloha from Hawaii.

Kaulana have you had any skin scrapings done to check for mites or fungal infection?

Our cat has severe asthma as well and we are trying Atopic but we cannot tell if it doing anything for her. So we want to stop it but dont know if we need to taper it or whether we can just stop?