Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Advice on living with cats and cat allergies?
My down-on-his-luck brother-in-law is going to move in with us in April, probably for the remainder of 2012, at the very least. The problem is, we have three cats of our own and foster rescue cats and he's quite allergic to them.
He's been in our house before, of course, and after a few hours, is congested, but not to the point of debilitation. However, he's never slept here and that will surely exacerbate the problem.
Our current plans include:
Confining the foster cats to our sunroom. Technically they are supposed to be confined to a single room, anyway, but we used to break the rules: ) We've already discontinued that practice and it's going very well.
Removing the carpeting in the room he'll be using. We refinished the hardwood floors, sealed them to eliminate most of the spaces that would have allowed dander and saliva to accumulate, and we're in the process of caulking the baseboard moulding in the room for the same reason. The cats are no longer allowed in the room and we're keeping the door closed at all times.
We plan to purchase an air purifier for his bedroom and probably for common areas of the home, as well. We were recommended a particular vacuum with a HEPA filter for using exclusively in his room, too. We've started vacuuming out the intake vents on our furnace system regularly and keeping the filters extra clean.
We also read of a product called Allersearch ADS, which is non-toxic and plant-based (I'm still researching safety, as we're a very all-natural household) that denatures the proteins that cause allergies. Has anyone heard of this or tried it?
We're also looking for a litter recommendation. We clean litterboxes daily and change the litter weekly, but a very low-dust option is recommended for allergies. Recommendations? I'm afraid we use an all-natural clay currently and we really like it, but it's dusty. We've moved the litterboxes to two rooms that he will not use and increased our housecleaning in preparation.
Any other suggestions? We're committed to making this go smoothly, as it's not an ideal situation for him, but he doesn't have any other options, really.
Re: Advice on living with cats and cat allergies?
You get best SIL of the year award!
Were his reactions during visits while on allergy meds? OTC or prescription?
He doesn't take allergy medicine, exactly. He's been going through immunotherapy treatments for a few years now and they've helped in some areas, but because he doesn't have cats of his own, he hasn't been focused on improving his tolerance for them, unfortunately. He gets the shots every month, so he's going to take to his doctor about it this month and we'll see where that goes, I guess.
He has tried "all" of the OTC allergy medicines. His former girlfriend had a cat and he tried a variety of things while dating her, including an inhaler of some kind and several OTC products, without progress. In the end, they ended up confining her cat (although, I don't know how that helped, since the protein had to be all over the house, anyway).
The good news is he LOVES cats, so he's happy to put up with them and work with us.
Edit: I didn't really answer your question. No, he was not on any allergy medicine during his past visits. So his reaction then is what we can expect in the future, without medicine.
Make sure the air purifier you get is also HEPA (not HEPA type or any other stupid notation. It should remove 99.97% of allergens to be an acutal HEPA filter). A HEPA filter in the living room as well probably wouldnt hurt either, but I do know they are expensive.
Any reason you wont use the HEPA vacuum in other parts of the house? The way I see it is that BIL will probably not spend all of his time in his room and you will want other areas of the home to allergen free as well. I am guessing the reason is that you dont want to contaminate his room with the allergens that could be on the vacuum?
We do everything you mentioned as well as regular vacuuming throughout the house including everything that is fabric (window coverings, couch, ect).
We used the carpet allergen product you mentioned when we first got out cats, but dont any more just because my DH's allergies weren't as bad as we expected.
You could also use Allerpet (allercat specifically) on your cats every 7-10 days. Some people swear by it.
If BIL touches the cats, he should wash his hands to get the allergens off. Not sure that is your responsibility though
. He could also wash his sheets every few days, change all clothes before getting into bed, and not have any other fabrics in his room (like window coverings). These might not all be reasonable, but it would help keep his room as allergen free as possible (not just cat allergens, but all of them!).
A friend of ours went through something similar, trying to keep her two cats in a house with an asthmatic daughter when she was very young and she said her daughter's doctor told her a vacuum that was exclusive to the rooms that cats would be in and not used in the allergen-free rooms was imperative. We just reversed the principle and decided we needed a vacuum exclusively for his room.
We have the Dyson Animal Vac for the rest of the house, anyway, which has a HEPA filter, but we'll get one for his room, too. I don't know how much dander and hair clings to the vacuum's parts (never having allergies myself, I've never even considered most of this nonsense, haha), but better safe than sorry, right?
My husband is allergic to our cat. The first few nights that he was home with Sherlock he was having shortness of breath and his eyes got itchy, red, and his eyelids swelled. He then went away for work for 2 weeks.
While he was out of the country I got air purifiers for the main part of the house and our bedroom. I keep the cat out of our bedroom all day long and keep doors closed to rooms he doesn't need to go in (bedrooms, bathrooms, the office). He's allowed in the office now when we're home but we close the door when we're not since that's where the gecko is. I vacuum the furniture with a HEPA vacuum and keep his litterbox and food in the basement and hubby just doesn't go down there often or for extended periods of time.
DH was really good about washing his hands before touching his face and any time after he touched the cat. He also always changed his clothes before going to bed so none of the cat dander/saliva/etc made it into bed with us.
He took OTC meds for the first week or so after returning but now he's symptom free without any medication.
Now of course, his allergies are much milder than your BILs so it's going to be harder, but he can adapt and it will get easier
Just try to keep the place as clean as possible!
Life and Love at #16 | our married life blog
I'm fairly allergic to most cats--and you already got great advice--so I just want to add this--I have a lot of success by cats just not being near my bed, pillow or clothes in the room I am staying
Childhood bf and FIL both have cats, and I visit them often. Just by keeping the cats out of where I sleep, I do fairly well.
And yes, you win SIL of the year award!
You are a pretty awesome person to take all of these steps. Kudos to you!
I don't have allergies, but one of our cats and I both have asthma. We use Feline Pine pellets and really like them.
Additionally, we have a dyson animal vacuum that we use daily. We vacuum all floors upholstered items, and curtains.
I think that will be great then since you will be vacuuming everywhere with a vacuum with a HEPA filter.
You are pretty awesome for doing all this! I hope it works out.
If BIL is at all open to medication, it might make his transition easier, even if only for a week or two.