Chicken or fish?

[Twinkster]

Twinkie is licking herself bald again. I think there are multiple issues again, stress, possible food allergy . Twink has stress issues we found out in April. As well as digestive problems. I switched her to Sheba as Tiki was giving her her liquid poos. I am going to stop the Sheba and I have been reading here about limited ingredient diets. Could it be the chicken? Or the fish? Both are in everything. I found some foods that don't have them in it, should I stop one protein at a time?

She has a vet appt tomorrow at 11am. I am hoping they do a blood panel, I don't want her to go on script food unless absolutely necessary .

 

[lisahe]

Overgrooming is always a difficult one to sort because there are so many possible culprits. I could ask a million questions but I'll only ask a few.

-How long ago did Twinkie start licking herself bald? (In this episode of licking... it sounds like this happened in the past, too, right?)

-What, exactly, are you now feeding her? And what did you take out of her diet? Was the Tiki a chicken food or a fish food or a fish-and-chicken food?

-What "stress issues" and "digestive problems" were identified in April?

As for your questions. It's hard to say if it's the chicken or the fish or something else without doing a food trial of some sort. To make things more difficult to sort, stress and digestive issues often go together. (One of our cats has both, too. Her digestive issues with ingredients have, thus far, been limited to thickeners like potato and agar-agar...)

Personally, I'd take the fish out of her diet first since fish is less desirable as an ingredient anyway.

Good luck!

 

[maggie101]

I feed my cat Lamborghini by weruva or steak frigghts. My cat peaches does not like fish and is allergic to chicken. She has been able to eat lamb. She likes daves healthy and nutritious and feline natural lamb which is expensive

 

[Twinkster]

Overgrooming is always a difficult one to sort because there are so many possible culprits. I could ask a million questions but I'll only ask a few.

-How long ago did Twinkie start licking herself bald? (In this episode of licking... it sounds like this happened in the past, too, right?)

-What, exactly, are you now feeding her? And what did you take out of her diet? Was the Tiki a chicken food or a fish food or a fish-and-chicken food?

-What "stress issues" and "digestive problems" were identified in April?

As for your questions. It's hard to say if it's the chicken or the fish or something else without doing a food trial of some sort. To make things more difficult to sort, stress and digestive issues often go together. (One of our cats has both, too. Her digestive issues with ingredients have, thus far, been limited to thickeners like potato and agar-agar...)

Personally, I'd take the fish out of her diet first since fish is less desirable as an ingredient anyway.

Good luck!

Right now she is eating Sheba and fancy feast mainly chicken and turkey varieties. She was licking herself raw in April, the vet said it was stress related to my daughter moving out. He gave her a steroid shot and all got well her fur grew back and she was normal again. The. We went to Italy at the beginning of may and were gone a week and came back with covid . Then she started licking herself again. It has got a bit worse over the past week and early in the week she was having weird eye twitches too. I started feeding her Sheba instead of tiki last month because she would get runny poos with any tiki product. With most foods really I thought it might be the gravy. She probably has a good allergy I just don’t know where to start. When she had FIP last year I bought every food I could find .she ate it all with no issues . It helped her gain weight she was so small. The licking def started this year. Her older sister is a bit of a bully so that may add to her stress. I found a few foods that are either chicken free or fish free.. why do they put fish oil in everything? I was hoping to find some venison wet food, as she did Ike and did good on the venison freeze dried raw. If I have to go back to that I will

 

[lisahe]

Right now she is eating Sheba and fancy feast mainly chicken and turkey varieties. She was licking herself raw in April, the vet said it was stress related to my daughter moving out. He gave her a steroid shot and all got well her fur grew back and she was normal again. The. We went to Italy at the beginning of may and were gone a week and came back with covid . Then she started licking herself again. It has got a bit worse over the past week and early in the week she was having weird eye twitches too. I started feeding her Sheba instead of tiki last month because she would get runny poos with any tiki product. With most foods really I thought it might be the gravy. She probably has a good allergy I just don’t know where to start. When she had FIP last year I bought every food I could find .she ate it all with no issues . It helped her gain weight she was so small. The licking def started this year. Her older sister is a bit of a bully so that may add to her stress. I found a few foods that are either chicken free or fish free.. why do they put fish oil in everything? I was hoping to find some venison wet food, as she did Ike and did good on the venison freeze dried raw. If I have to go back to that I will

A few thoughts here:

-It sounds like stress could be a big factor here and that combined with food issues makes things hard to sort. (We have a similar situation: our cat with digestive issues has a sister who thinks she's an alpha and can also be a bully.) I find that Rescue Remedy (homeopathic drops for stress) helps a fair bit with Edwina's stress.

-As for the food issues, though, which Tiki foods were you feeding when Twinkie had the runny poo? Were they the plainer foods (the After Dark line or maybe the plain shreds from the original "luau" line?) or were they pouch foods that have xanthan gum in them? There are big differences in the ingredients of various Tiki foods. Xanthan gum gives some cats digestive trouble. Some of Tiki's other foods -- like After Dark -- don't have thickeners so if one of those was the issue, it's more likely the meat in the food is the problem. Thickeners are why gravies are often the problem. Our cats have had trouble with several thickeners.

-Was the freeze-dried raw venison the last food that Twinkie did well on? If so, maybe it's worth going back to that? I like to go back to the last combination of foods that worked for the cat(s), before the problem started. Of course it's often difficult to figure that out, given how many ingredients some foods have. This is why it's often easiest to start with simplest recipes possible.

-Finally, if Twinkie's problem is an allergy, it's possible that an antihistamine would help. Our other cat, Ireland, the one who thinks she's an alpha, had an overgrooming problem a few years ago and has been taking an antihistamine (chlorpheniramine) ever since. We're not entirely sure her problem really was allergies but she tends to get hay fever and is also asthmatic, so I'm more than happy to give her an antihistamine. It also seems to take the edge off her nervousness and occasional minor aggression toward Edwina.

Good luck and please do let us know what the vet suggests!

 

[Astragal14]

Ask your vet about a B12 injection, this will help her digestive system heal faster from the diarrhea.

lisahe has some great advice about distinguishing between the causes of over grooming and digestive issues. It could be stress, food allergies, environmental allergies, IBD... or a combination of those.

Let us know how Twinkie's vet visit went, I hope everything went well. It certainly sounds like she's had a few stressful events recently. One of my cats is a nervous eater who also has stress induced colitis (as well as IBD). A few things that have helped us manage stress are Purina Calming Care probiotic (mixed into food daily), Feliway diffusers (we set ours on a timer to save money on refills), and Zylkene calming supplement (use only as needed and ask your vet about the most appropriate dosage, this is not meant to be a long term supplement like the Purina Calming Care).

https://www.chewy.com/purina-pro-plan-veterinary-diets/dp/684734
FELIWAY MultiCat 30 Day Starter Kit Calming Diffuser for Cats, 1 count - Chewy.com
VETOQUINOL Zylkene 75-mg Capsules Calming Supplement for Small Dogs & Cats, 14 count - Chewy.com

 

[Twinkster]

Update : The vet gave twink another steroid shot and a antibiotic. She is still licking not nearly as much as before , I try to distract her with a wand toy when she starts to lick.
I did talk to him about a limited diet. He said to pick a protein and stay with it for 3 months to see if it works. He talked about a prescription diet , I do want to try other things before we go that route.
So I have basically been transitioning her to a NO fish diet. It is a lot of label reading and I also started her a food journal. Her dry food , Orien regional red does have fish so I need to find a new dry that works for her. The dry food is NOT a staple in their diet , if I didn't give it to them they would not care.but they do pick at the bowl occasionally.
I can not believe how much fish and chicken is in cat food.

In the end he said the licking is due to the stress situation. I need to keep working with her to work on that. I changed our feliway from the optimum to the happy cat multi version. I had just put the optimum in last month because the didn't have the happy cat one.

 

[Alldara]

I would try something simple like Instinct's Limited Ingredients Rabbit. (There's one LID and one that isn't. Keep your eye out)

There's lots of brands with lots of LIDs these days. Get a single can of a couple Novel proteins to see what your cat will eat. It takes 6 to 8 weeks of feeding nothing but a single novel protein to know if the cause is due to a food allergy.