White cat shedding non-stop, year-round. Everything is covered in a blanket of white. Please help!

[coronet]

Hello fellow kitty enthusiasts, I need some suggestions as to what to do about my bundle of white kitty love. I have a 5 year-old pure white, domestic short-hair female cat that sheds non-stop year round. My entire house is basically a trail of white hair and I am resigned to basically following my cat around with an arsenal of vacuums, lint rollers, and sticky tape to try to curb the insanity.

Some information about my cat:

- I live in the Philadelphia area, so we get four seasons.

- She has a clean bill of health from our vet. I just went to the vet about a month ago.

- She eats canned food at night and dry food during the day. Purina wet food and for dry food I alternate her between VeRUS (not sure if I can link it, but it's natural, holistic cat food), Chicken Soup, or Blue Buffalo as she will get picky after a few months of the same kind. I try to feed her high quality dry food and she has been on high-quality dry her whole life

- I brush her as frequently as her picky bum will allow with a Furminator brush (she dislikes it), or a fur mitt. I get off a whole cat's worth of hair nearly every time I do this. It looks like I've sheared a sheep.

And yet, every time I do this, it makes not a lick of difference. My couches have a cat outline (literally a white outline of a cat), there are tumble weeds of hair floating around the hard wood, anything she brushes against gets "furred". I love her to death, but the fur is INSANE. I notice no difference between the seasons so I don't think she's "blowing out her coat".

Any suggestions? Do I just have the furriest cat ever? The vet had no suggestions and just said "some cats shed more than others". 

Help?

 

[red top rescue]

I think your problem isn't really a matter of grooming as it sounds like you are doing a great job there.  It sounds to me like she needs to have her diet adjusted, because even the high quality dry foods may not be the exact formula she needs.  The majority of commercial cat food brands do not contain enough fat to ideally nourish cats' skin.  Our old knowledge was that In a dry food, the ideal ratio of protein to fat should be 3:2, and very few of them have that anymore.  Most of them have a 2:1 ratio, or not even that good.  (The older versions of IAMS used to have that before it was sold and changed, and Science Diet also used to have that ratio, but I have no idea what its proportions are now.  Inadequate protein can also cause that problem -- the protein can be adequate in amount but not in type, i.e. digestability.  Most vets are NOT well trained in nutrition in vet school and there are certainly new trends these days, so please go and look in that Forum to find out more about what dietary changes you might want to try to improve her skin.

 

[momto3cats]

She might benefit from eating kitten food, since it tends to be higher in protein and fat. You can also add supplements like fish oil and B vitamins (mix them into her wet food). I've had pretty good results with these things in the past, more so with some cats than others.  It's also true that some cats do shed more than others, but you might be able to reduce it somewhat.

 

[littlelion]

Not much different than me. My cavalier king Charles spaniel coats everything with white fur!

Maybe you should try a new brush? Some brushes work better with problems like this. Now I have a short haired cat, so there's not much of a problem with him. Ask your vet or local pet store about these kind of brushes, or do some research, by reading some reviews on here!

I find it kind of strange that your cat is a short haired cat and sheds a lot. The ones that shed are usually the long haired cats.

I guess your vet is kind of right, some cats do shed more than others. He just should have given you more advice.

Well I hope that helps!