I love my cats and want the best for them. That is why I keep a close eye on them. I know that cats are good at hiding things and I think they know somehow that I know this and that is why I do it.
I determine what my cats have allergies to by a couple or more reactions: I feed them different food for a week. I then watch very closely to see if they have a reaction to it; if they do then I read the label and what the ingredients are and the next day I read the ingredients on the new food and if none of that food has the ingredients the food from the other day had, I feed this new food to them. I do this for a week with the wet food and the following week for the dry food and monitor it very closely for all the cats. The above system works very well for one cat but it does take longer for 4 cats for signs to show up.
I do it a little differently for outside irritants. The cats are on a leash when they go outside and I go with them. This way I can watch what they get into, where they go and make sure they are not bothered by chemicals that people spray on weeds or those pretty yellow flowers. If there is any breaking out from outdoor pollutants on there legs or other body parts, they are taken to the vet for steroid shots. If they have ingested anything while outside I also check that in case they would get sick from it and throw up of have respiratory or breathing problems from it.
One cat I had named Tuffy was a very healthy cat and lived with me for 20 1/2 years. He was very good at hiding his signs of allergies. This happened to him the last 6 months of his life. He developed an allergy to grass. He loved to go outside and make sure that there were no cats on his yard as he was very possessive and wanted no cats there. The yard was fenced in so the cats that got in the yard had to jump over a fence. I had Tuffy on a leash so that he couldn't stray off the yard and usually I was out there with him, but one time the phone rang; I ran inside to answer it and when I went out he had gotten a bad scratch on his left eye from another cat. I took him to the vet and he had to have an antibiotic as well as some eye cream. I don't know if that started the allergy to grass. He had to stay inside or when he came in his paws or where ever the grass had touched him developed into a rash and he would have had the spots raw from chewing on them.
As time went on I believe from not being able to go outside he developed depression plus his memory was getting bad. He would go over to his food dish at least 7 or 8 times and not eat anything and go back to his chair. I had the vet do a lot of tests on him and nothing would show up. I was lucky the vet was a "traveling vet" and would come to the house so I didn't have to take him to her office. I finally had to have him put to sleep as I couldn't stand to see him suffer anymore.
This still hurts me to write this even after 17 years and I feel sad even after that amount of time. I now have 4 cats. Two of them are getting old as they are sixteen and fourteen years old. I have a story to tell about all my cats and would love to do their stories.
I loved this cat very much. He was such a companion animal. I would lay on the couch and he would lay against my back with paws on couch and back against me. He stayed in the house with me when I was at work and home on weekends. He would greet me at the door when I came home and wanted to be picked up and he did this until he passed away.
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