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- Dec 13, 2013
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Sorry to read that you are still dealing with this ...
GAH!! We have about 4-5 more little scabby spots that popped up here & there on Monty. These are tiny mind you, very tiny little scabs. A couple back around his neck area where they first started, and this is the first time I've felt any on the inside of a hind leg. Poor little guy (not to mention our pocketbook) just can't seem to get a break.
I guess the great news is his sneezes have remained very low in comparison to where we started. He now only sneezes clear, at most, 2-4x/day which is way, way down from the 15-20x/day when we started having these issues overall.
Oddly enough, no matter what the "specialist" stated I'm now more convinced than ever it is something food related. Reason being - as much as I don't like the idea of experimenting - ultimately you have to add back in things that may be the trigger to hopefully ID it so we can all get past this.
I specifically asked the specialist, since he stated he had no reason to believe it was a food allergy, if I should rotate back in the food we had been feeding. His answer was yes, and now we're back to the little scabs even though not remotely near the number he had before. So over the past 3 days he has had one of his two wet meals a day of the Friskies Chicken shreds. I continue feeding the Instinct rabbit kibble because they both seem to love it. No supplements other than the salmon oil. He did thieve some of Si's FF chicken & turkey kibble but only about 5-6 pieces. So I have to believe something in one of those - chicken or whatever else is in that stuff - may be the trigger.
Little guy is still licking himself silly, but he never really quit doing that, even when the original scabs went away. The rescue remedy, at least in our case, has not seemed to help lessen the stress I'm sure he must feel over constantly being itchy. Hopefully Monday the vet will have the Feliway spray back in stock so we can start trying that.
My hats are off, and my heart certainly goes out, to all of you dealing with kitties with any sort of allergy. This has only been going on 3wks for us now and I'm ready to pull my own hair out.
From reading all of your posts, it sounds to me like the itching and scabbing is more the result of an external cause rather than food allergy. Has your vet checked for ear mites or mange mites or a possible yeast infection. All of these would cause scratching and itchiness. You can do a quick check in his ears to see if you can detect an odor. This is one symptom of possible yeast infection. Has anybody done any scrapings of the scabs to test for yeast or other bacterial infection? If not, I would add this to the list of things to do, which should determine the cause, or at least narrow down the possibilities.
Our newest addition (Thomas) came bearing a mild case of fleas. All cats were promptly dosed with Advantage, plus the whole house got a full cleaning from top to bottom and rooms were sprayed with a specially-formulated aerosol to treat carpets, couches, wall joints, etc. Thankfully these efforts took care of the problem. Adult fleas can lay hundreds of eggs during their cycle which can survive in cracks of floors and between wall joints for some time only to re-infect cats some time later, so the aerosol sprays are a good thing to do. I know you have mentioned that you have checked for fleas but sometimes they are hard to detect, so its worth looking more closely into this possibility. Here is a link to more information on flea allergies : http://www.petmd.com/cat/conditions/skin/c_ct_flea_bite_hypersensitivity
Hope you can get to the bottom of this real soon. All the best of luck!
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