is anyone else's cat allergic to wet food?

Hi All!
After months of trial and error, trips to the vet, and medication, it has been determined that my precious Bogie is allergic to commercial wet food. Has anyone else had this issue? How have you dealt with it? Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Nope that is a new one on me! I wonder what in the wet food she is reacting to? Have you tried the organic blends like Natural Life etc?

What type of allergic reaction (e.g. symptoms) did Bogie have?

I've tried both commercial (i.e Fancy Feast) and natural foods (i.e. wellness, solid gold). He has the same reaction to both. His allergy symptoms started before I adopted him, when he was brought in by the shelter (they found him on a golf course hence the name bogie). He loses clumps of hair, get large lesions, and gets very itchy skin. The vet has run all possible tests and decided it was a food allergy. Her suggestion was to try food combinations and see which one would work. I've tried several dry/wet combos, just wet, and just dry. On the just dry diet, his spots have completely cleared within a few weeks and the spots are all gone. His hair is finally growing back too.

That's a new one on me. I had a cat that was allergic to dogs, but never to food! Good info to share with the forum members!

I have been wondering the same. Earlier he ate only wet & refused to eat dry food. He had food poisoning reccently from a place we had boarded him & since then, everytime I give him wet food, he has diarrhea & vomiting but is fine on dry food (which he has started eating) . Can such a drastic change take place ? Thanks in advance !

There is no such thing as being allergic to wet food, only to ingredients. :nod:
What you have to do is figure out what exact ingredient he is allergic too by giving foods that do not have very many ingredients in common. So if the dry food has chicken and corn in it, find a food with beef and potatoes or duck and peas. If he reacts to both go down the lists and find the common ingredients between those two (say gluten) and then find a food without that.
Also keep in mind your cat has to be on the new food for at least 4 weeks before you can expect results. *nods*

He used to eat Wellness Kitten wet food which had chicken as it's main ingredient. Now he seems intolerant of the same brand as well as Fancy Feast roasted succulent chicken but is able to tolerate his Hill's Science Diet kitten dry food which has also chicken as it's main ingredient. He likes chicken mostly, so all his food is chicken based. His reaction has been so severe that he has been hospitalized right now & blood tests, etc will be done. But since the reaction seems to be only to the wet food, I was wondering. He is 9 months old male kitten of mixed Persian breed.

Has the vet confirmed it's allergies? Diarrhea and vomiting are usually an indicator of something else, like IBD.

No, she will be doing tests etc but she says it is probably intolerance to wet food - maybe the food poisoning has messed up his system. Could IBD happen to a cat as young as 9 months ? Each time (3 times now) I started intoducing him back to wet food, his reaction has only gotten more worse each time. At fisrt it was just diarrhea, then next time it was diarrhea & vomiting, this time it is diarrhea with blood & vomiting, though he was absolutely fine on dry food. Could it be intolence vs allergies ?

Like, I said, there is no such thing as being allergic to wet food. The only difference between wet and dry is the water quantity. You can have the exact same ingredients in each.
Were the wet foods you gave grain free? That could easily explain the issue. Grains can mask underlying issues until they are removed. It would probably be best to switch him to a raw diet if you cannot easily find a different food that sits well with him. And I think IBD can start that young, yes.

You should give Carolina a PM, she dealt with diarrhea and intestinal issues with her Bugsy for.. 8 months I think until she finally switched to raw and got her first solid poops.

The wellness kitten formula was grain free & yet he got sick. The dry food has grain in it but he does not get sick from it. Could it just be intolerance to wet food and not an allergy ? Raw is not an option as we travel a lot :-(

I think maybe you misunderstood?
What I meant was, because your wet food has no grains, his body is showing symptoms of a problem he already has. The grains in the dry food mask that problem.
I don't think your problem is an allergy, but probably more something like IBD.
You can do raw even if you travel, just PM Carolina and ask her. :nod:

So if he has IBD, and I keep giving him dry food which he can tolerate will he eventually get sick from it as well ? I live outside of the US where raw in not easily available.

It's hard to say for sure.. I think it's better no matter what to try to get him on at least a partially wet diet. Being male puts him at a greater risk for urinary issues, and the greatest weapon you have is to keep his system flushed with a moisture rich diet. :nod:

You don't need to buy the frozen bag raw in order to feed it. *shakes head* You can put it together yourself, just by going to the store or market and buying fresh meats and feeding them that way. Of course, then you must either top it with a powder to balance, or feed a certain ratio to get the proper levels, but it can be done. And you are in the right place to learn. :nod:

Thanks for all the replies. I will bring it up with his vet & see what she has to say. Thanks again & hopefully he will get better soon.

It's a long shot, but is it possible that your cat is actually allergic to the cans? There's a reason I don't eat commercially canned foods- you never know what is leeching from possibly impure metals, nor what they use to line/seal the cans. 

Most wet foods contain carrageenan and/or guar gum. Carrageenan can be an irritant. I'm not saying that's what it is, it's just the most commonly found product in wet food that isn't in dry food.

But Minka's correct: a cat cannot be allergic to a "type" of food (e.g. "dry" or "wet.") It's an ingredient (or ingredients) IN the food.

That could be it as he seems perfectly fine & is pooping normally as soon as we switch him to dry food. I kept giving him wet food as I know it is better for him nutritionally and that is what he used to eat but maybe right now he just needs to stabilise & if dry food, does that for him, dry food it is. I just hope it is something as simple as that & not a disease like IBD. Thanks for your insight & I just wanted to know some possibilities as to why this is happening. Many thanks ! 

My cats don't really like wet food, but no, they're not allergic! Actually some of the PPs are right - your cat simply can't be allergic to wet food in general.  It has to be a specific ingredient or ingredients in the foods you have fed your cat.  Cats can have allergies that could lead to the symptoms you're describing - although truthfully, true food allergies in cats are uncommon.  About 5% of skin problems in cats are due to a true food allergy (more often it's due to environmental allergies, contact allergies, flea/insect allergies, or another skin condition).  And not all reactions to food are due to true food allergies either - many of them are due to sensitivities or intolerances (like to carrageenan) and aren't due to an immune response (which would define it as an allergy).  

A true food allergy is a reaction by the immune system to a particular ingredient, and generally it's to one of a protein in that ingredient.  So to say that your cat might be allergic to "chicken" would most likely be to say they are allergic to the protein portion of the chicken (not the fat or other nutrients included in the ingredient "chicken").  Likewise for beef, soy, corn, wheat, eggs, etc. - whatever the "ingredient" is, it's the protein element that is usually causing the allergic reaction.  

Anyway, the most common allergens in cats are beef, chicken, fish, and dairy. It's a misconception that "grain allergies" (usually meaning allergies to the proteins found in grains, aka glutens, like wheat and corn gluten) are more common than these allergens (they really aren't), so it's really not surprising that your cat reacted to a grain-free food.

Vets can do tests to determine if your cat has an allergy or not, but diagnosing what your cat is allergic to specifically can take a LOT of time and trial and error and can't be done with blood tests. You will need to do an elimination trial for the different protein sources to see which one is causing the reaction. I would say that an elimination trial is probably easier to do with the help of your vet. Some other tips:

- Don't mix between wet and dry - just stick to one or the other for the sake of the trial - if you are trying to track both, it will become way too complicated

- you will need to feed exclusively the foods you are testing for about 4 weeks at a time - NO TREATS, SCRAPS, ETC. (and make sure you do a 3-5 day transition between each food)

- make sure you track exactly which foods you are feeding and their ingredient lists so you can compare (even keep a journal recording how your cat does on each food throughout the weeks).

Here is an article on food allergies and elimination trials that could be helpful as a start: http://www.halopets.com/pet-education/pet-articles/food_allergies_in_pets.html.  

Hope that helps!