Regarding cat hypoallergenic food

Hi there,

I have 2 cats, my oldest one has been scratching himself on the head a lot since he was a baby. When he was about 6 yo, the scratching started to be worst in the sense that he would do it until it turns pink/red. That was only once in a while however and I would apply some natural gel in order to help him out. About a year ago, that became more frequent and the previous redness never had time to heal itself.

I decided to go to the vet at the beginning of last month. The vet looked at him and said it was food allergies (without doing any tests). She had me buy some expensive hypoallergenic food, told me to progressively introduce it into the food, eventually go half & half and finally completely replace it. Problem is that the more I introduce the new food, the more his feces became soft until it went total diarrhea when the new food was at 100% in his bowl.

So I stopped using the food, went back to the old one, less than 48 hours later, feces were back to normal. Went back to the vet, they sold me some new hypoallergenic food, I rinsed and repeated, same results.

Is it possible that some cats simply can’t properly digest hypoallergenic food? Also, is it not possible to do allergy tests for cats?

Thank you

Food allergies are usually detected by means of an elimination diet, which can take months, or a blood test. Some people, including many vets, aren't convinced of the accuracy of the blood test, but it's been spot on for the cats our shelter has had tested. There's a lot of inbreeding among feral cats here, and a real problem with cats being allergic to chicken.

Our own cat is allergic to chicken and all grains, including rice, and has IBD. The hypoallergenic diets with hydrolyzed protein didn't work for him at all, so we tried a German limited ingredient diet (a brand not available outside German-speaking countries) with no grain and unique protein sources like reindeer, kangaroo, goat, horse and hare.

Trying an LID with just one unique source of protein and one vegetable, like Duck & Pea might help.

I had very similar issues with all of the prescription hypoallergenic foods. After the third food, we made the decision to go to a limited ingredient diet like jcat has suggested.

I chose Nature's Variety Instinct limited ingredient turkey. (They also have a LID rabbit formula in canned/dry and a LID duck formula in canned.)

When choosing a LID food, be sure to read the ingredients as I have found some foods claiming to be LID, but contain 2 protein sources.