cat food recs for itchy cat

botanicalbliss

One of my cats has been super itchy.  We took her to the vet, and there is no obvious reason for this.  She's indoors only and has no sign of fleas.  The vet gave her a steroid shot for temporary relief, but this happened before and our other vet said it might be a food allergy.  So here's my series of questions:

1. Should I wait until the steroids wear off and see if she's still itchy?  I assume she will be since steroids don't actually fix anything.

2. Should I do allergy testing to figure out what exactly she is allergic to (food or environment)?  Any idea on how much that costs?

3. Should I switch her food now?  Should I eliminate any possible allergy source (grains, animal by-products) and get something like buffalo or duck?  Could I just reduce grains?  Any idea what the most common cat food allergy is?

I know I'm asking a lot, but any advice would be helpful!  Thanks!

mainerocks

I don't know much on this topic, but California Natural has a very small ingredient list so it might be a good one to try if you want to try to see if it's a food allergen. I would start with the one that is not the protein you are currently using (They have a chicken and a herring, I think just those two?)

Kaiene

What are you feeding her now? If you haven't already, check out the website petfoodratings.net (sorry, not clicky). It has information about a variety of cat foods along with ratings and ingredients. Choose a 4 or 5 star food. You could do the allergy testing if you want. My mom started feeding her cat Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul and the cat was very itchy. She switched to Taste of the Wild and the itching stopped. If you are going to try new foods, you'll want to gradually transition to the new food to avoid tummy problems.

MNVegas

My cat, Sassy, had a big itching problem and was actually maming herself. We changed food to grain free with main protein being duck.  Right now she is on the Blue Wilderness duck. She would also get occassional steroid shots and would be fine until the shot wore off. We also tried antihistamines

Our primary vet finally suggested that we take Sassy to a vet dermatologist and fortunately had one located just a few miles away. During our first visit derma vet diagnosis was a rare form of dermatitis. Sassy was prescribed oral Atopica and we have seen great improvements. We also continue to feed her grain free.

 

botanicalbliss

Thanks, ladies!  I bought some grain free food to try, and if that doesn't kick it, I might try eliminating chicken and/or fish.  All else fails, we'll go in for allergy testing.  Maybe we should do that first and save some $$ on food... we shall see!  Hopefully going grain free will fix the problem.