By Andee Joyce

Andrea Sullivan remembers the first time she saw the bald patches on South-paw's flanks. They had just moved from the East Coast, where Southpaw had been an indoor cat, to the West, where she was starting to go outside. "Soon I started to notice she was licking and biting at herself a lot more than she used to, and she was bald from her middle all the way down to the insides of her back legs," Sullivan says. After over-the-counter skin treatments proved unsuccessful, Southpaw had a series of cortisone treatments from several veterinarians. The shots provided temporary relief, but in time Southpaw went back to licking herself bald and scratching her neck until it scabbed over.

Sullivan then took Southpaw to a veterinary acupuncturist. Treatments helped, but they were expensive and Andrea couldn't afford to keep them up. She also tried changing Southpaw's food, to no avail. Finally, Southpaw solved the problem herself: She lost interest in going outside. When Southpaw became an indoor cat again, the itching stopped.

Does Southpaw's story sound familiar? If it does, your cat suffers from allergies.

Cats have allergies just like humans — and as with human allergies, cat allergies vary in severity and can only be managed, not cured. Cats can develop allergies from flea bites to food to airborne pollens. Reactions — often severe ones — may appear suddenly at any age. Some cats develop respiratory allergies (usually asthmatic wheezing) or digestive allergies (vomiting and diarrhea), but skin allergies are the most common.

A single cortisone shot from a general practice veterinarian or even an over-the-counter skin treatment can provide sufficient relief if symptoms are mild. But if basic treatments don't work or stop working, specialty intervention might be needed from a holistic practitioner or a dermatology/allergy specialist.

First Things First: The Diagnosis

Where do you begin if watching your cat scratch, bite, lick itself bald and act miserable is driving you crazy? Phillip Raclyn, DVM, who practices both holistic and traditional veterinary medicine in New York City, says his first order of business is determining whether the cat's symptoms are allergy-related rather than the result of another problem such as an autoimmune disorder or parasites.

"If someone brought a cat to me and said, 'I think my cat has an allergy,' first we'd have to determine that was actually the case," Dr. Raclyn says. "It can be a very difficult thing to determine. There's a process of elimination that you have to go through."

Dr. Raclyn emphasizes all cats have an "allergy threshold," a point at which symptoms such as itching manifest themselves. "Any cat can develop an allergy problem to any substance and the allergy can exist without symptoms for a long time until that threshold is crossed. For example, a cat can eat chicken for years with no apparent problems and then, all of a sudden — boom! — chicken allergy," he says.

Although genetics can be a factor, the quality of a cat's diet can make a difference in the treatment and prevention of allergy problems, Dr. Raclyn says. "Natural foods, omega-3 fatty acids and a good multivitamin supplement are essential." (see sidebar).

Start With the Food

Pinpointing the trigger to your cat's reactions can be tricky, especially if it's allergic to more than one substance, which is common. George Doering, DVM, a veterinary allergy specialist from the San Francisco Bay area, says he begins the process by working with the animal's diet. "Usually we see patients after they've had two or three cortisone shots and they're still itching," he says. "The first thing we do is change the food to see if that's the problem."

Dr. Doering suggests a homemade diet with potato as a starch and an exotic form of protein such as rabbit, venison or duck, because these foods are unlikely to be in the cat's regular diet. "You won't see changes right away — you have to give it at least eight weeks. Some specialists will even tell you 12 weeks, but it takes at least eight," he says.

If yours is a multiple-cat household, Dr. Raclyn recommends all cats in the house eat the same food, if possible. "Feeding cats separately is extremely difficult, if not impossible," he says. It's hard to keep one cat out of another cat's food.

Food addictions due to flavor enhancers in many commercial foods can be an impediment to starting a cat on a new diet, says Ihor Basko, DVM, a Hawaii-based holistic practitioner and acupuncturist.

Dr. Raclyn recommends a slow, gradual transition to a new diet; and ultra-finicky eaters should be given a choice of acceptable foods and be allowed to choose what they like best. In extreme cases, where a cat is starving itself to protest the diet change, he might prescribe an appetite stimulant, such as Periactin.

The Next Step: Testing

If food isn't the culprit, a blood allergy or skin test might determine the source. A serum allergy test costs $150 to $200, depending on where you live. "It's next to useless for determining food allergies, but it's very helpful in diagnosing contact or inhalant allergies," Raclyn says.

Casey Phillips, who owns Dominic, a 2-year-old Siamese, says her cat's serum allergy test yielded positive results for house dust mites, black flies, sycamore, rye grass, ragweed and honeysuckle.

Dominic's allergy specialist put him on oral steroids, as well as Periactin, which Casey believes has been a wonder drug for her cat. In addition to being an appetite stimulant, Periactin is also an antihistamine used for human allergies. Other veterinarians, like Dr. Raclyn, claim limited success in putting cats or dogs on antihistamines, but both Casey and her veterinarian were thrilled with Dominic's progress on Periactin.

Stop the Itch — For Good

Whether holistic or traditional, most veterinarians discourage the long-term use of cortisone injections to stop itching because prolonged use can be harmful to a cat's kidneys. Dr. Doering gives a cortisone shot initially for immediate relief but gives allergy shots based on serum allergy test results for longer-term treatment of pollen and mold allergies. These extracts desensitize or hyposensitize the cat to the allergy source like allergy shots for humans and are effective 75-90 percent of the time, Dr. Doering says.

Your veterinarian need not be a specialist to perform serum allergy tests or formulate allergy vaccines. A veterinary school or the closest dermatology/allergy specialist can consult with your veterinarian by phone, or in some cases online for more precise instructions, Dr. Doering says.

Cats suffer from allergies less frequently than dogs, Dr. Doering says. He estimates he sees one cat for every nine dogs in his practice. "I like cats and I'd be a feline allergy specialist if I could, but then I'd starve to death! We don't get many cats in here, but the cases we do get are pretty desperate."

This article originally appeared in the March 2000 issue of CAT FANCY.