My only experience with cat allergies was with one of my earlier cats. For a long time he would only eat tuna-flavored cat food, but then his fur started falling out. My mother (who had him at the time) took him to a vet who said he was allergic to tuna. She changed his cat food to non-tuna flavors, and his fur grew back and he never had the problem again.

Just a completely uneducated observation -- would an antihistamine type of drug help with both the itching and the finicky eating?

I've tried the antihistamine and all it does is knock him out then when he awakes he's back to scratching like crazy. Thanks anyway.

You need to find a vet that will properly examine him and run the allergy tests.

You don't need a perscription food if your cat has allergies, you simply need to find a food without the ingredient your cat is allergic to. My son's dog has severe food allergies. They finally isolated what he could and couldn't eat thru a process of elimination. He basically can only eat tuna or salmon and sweet potatoes. Go to a feed store or small pet store that carries the higher quality foods. They have small sample bags that you can get for free. I use Felidae for my three cats and I've found that in the long run it's cheaper because they eat less of it and it's really not that much more expensive especially if you buy in bulk.

1) Change to dust-free litter (World's Best Cat Litter, Yesterday's News)

2) Give him Lysine.

3)Siwtch to food conatining No seafood/fish/fish meal/fish oil You might have to switch to duck or venison or make your own food.

4) Find another vet.

Here is a link that might be useful: Explanation of Lysine / Herpes

I'd definitely have your vet run allergy tests to find out exactly what kitty is allergic to. My sister feeds one of her girls prescription food (she has 3 kitties) as she's allergic to a protein in commercial cat food - she breaks out in sores, gets fat lips, just an overall mess if she eats regular cat food. I've linked below an info sheet I found on cat allergies that is really informative. Here's another link too, at the bottom of the article it has a list of OTC (over the counter so to speak) foods that are available at specialty pet food stores (where you can buy natural food - in Canada I can buy them at PetValu and Global Ryan's Quality Pet Foods, those types of stores), would be worth giving a try:
http://www.littlebigcat.com/index.php?action=library&act=show&item=foodallergiesincats

Good luck!
tess

Here is a link that might be useful: Cat allergies

What flea control product are your cats on, and how often do you apply it? You almost NEVER see fleas on a cat, even if they are infested, because they scratch them off or chew them off so quickly. But it's still enough to cause severe allergies. The cheapest and easiest way to rule out flea allergies is to do maintain absolute flea control.

You could also manage the cat with cyclosporin instead of steroids. Much less long term side effects, such as making your cat diabetic.

Allergy testing is available, but the cat must be off steroids for several weeks. It is expensive at $120, then if you start immunotherapy shots the medication is $120 for about 6 months worth. Not all cats respond to the immunotherapy, but you have to keep it up for a year before deciding that your pet didn't respond. If you aren't going to do immunotherapy there is really no reason to do allergy testing. Allergy testing does not test for food allergies, and you can't control environmental allergens, so there really isn't a point if you aren't going to use the immunotherapy.

The only way to test for food allergies to do a strict limited ingredient trial. Your cat cannot have eaten ANY ingredients in the new food ever before, or the diet trial will not work. It doesn't have to be a prescription diet, but if there is any possibility that your cat could eat another non-food-trial food, then the food trial won't work. Either have to feed all the cats the same diet, or somehow restrict the allergic cat from getting to any other food.

I would also consider that your cat has something else besides allergies, or in addition to allergies, causing him not to respond well to the cortisone. Until you find a vet willing to put in the time and effort to properly diagnose your cat, it is going to be impossible to get him treated.

Good luck.

The only thing about allergy testing, the food panels are not highly accurate. The elimination diet is still the gold standard for determining food allergies. A few of the possible food allergies are mentioned above. I would pursue that if you have not before.

You may want to consider environmental allergy testing too - that is supposed to be more accurate than the food panels.

FYI - I did do both with my cat but it was more of a last resort and knowing that the food panel may not provide much info. In his case, he didn't have any food numbers higher than the threshhold, but he had very high numbers for mold allergies. I noticed him twitching more last week - we had our windows open and the mold allergins were high outside.

The special diet can be a pain when you have multiple cats. But I have three cats - the IBD cat eats different food than the other two, and the other two don't always eat the same flavors. And since I'm watching their weight so well, I never let them eat the other cats food.