Best Food Products For Cats With Allergies
Theres a lot of trial and error when it comes to determining what food your cat is allergic to. Once youve discovered it, heres a list of food products from Applaws that are suitable for cats with allergies!
Cats love chicken, and it has high protein requirements for their optimum growth and performance.
Why Buy Hypoallergenic Cat Food
The major reason why we suggest hypoallergenic cat food is because your cat might be allergic to specific ingredients used in the normal cat foods. Keep in mind that your cat might continue eating the food regardless of allergies. He doesn’t know!
So, you have to be vigilant to monitor the symptoms to protect your furry little friend from food allergies.
Generally, it is a bit hard to know whether your cat is allergic to a certain ingredient or not. However, there are several symptoms from which you can judge that your cat is allergic to certain foods.
The common symptoms include scratching their heads and neck and also gastrointestinal problems i.e. vomiting and diarrhea.
The best hypoallergenic cat foods are usually more expensive than the usual cat foods available in the market. But we always suggest you buy hypoallergenic foods to make sure that your cat is always healthy. Spending a little more on the food never hurts as long as your cat is healthy and happy.
I learned about hypoallergenic cat food when my kitty showed symptoms of an allergic reaction for the first time. He started vomiting right after eating food and thats when I knew something was wrong. I immediately took him to the vet who explained to me about the food allergy.
After that, I started buying only the best in hypoallergenic cat foods because this way, my mind is always at peace knowing that my little best friend is safe.
Treatment Of Wet Food Allergy In Cats
Several weeks of the elimination diet may be required in order to reveal which particular ingredient is causing the patients distress, and during this time your cat will generally continue experiencing many of the symptoms of the allergy. Corticosteroids are frequently employed to reduce swelling and antihistamines are often an effective method to calm itching and prevent scratching. However, both of these treatments may make uncovering the problem ingredient in your cats wet food more difficult by masking the symptoms of the allergy.
Because of this, many veterinary professionals choose to delay prescribing these types of medication until they are certain of the results of the elimination diet. Once the specific allergen has been identified, it should be eliminated entirely from the cats diet this means that supplements and treats should be carefully monitored to ensure that the offending ingredient is not included.
Cats that experience allergic reactions that affect the skin quite often develop secondary skin infections and antibiotics are prescribed to either combat or prevent this complication. Additional daily supplements, including probiotics and Omega-3 oils, are frequently recommended for all sorts of allergies in order to support the immune system and to assist your cats body in handling any accidental exposures to the allergen as well as helping to prevent the cultivation of new allergies.
Worried about the cost of Wet Food Allergy treatment?
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Firstmate Chicken Meal With Blueberries Formula Limited Ingredient Diet Dry Cat Food
Though FirstMate cat food is not made in the USA, it is a highly trusted brand known for the quality of its ingredients. This FirstMate Chicken Meal with Blueberries Formula Limited Ingredient Diet Dry Cat Food is a great choice for cats with allergies because it is a very limited ingredient formula and highly digestible. This formula features chicken meal as a single source of protein with digestible carbohydrates including potatoes and blueberries. It wont work if your cat has a sensitivity to chicken, but it only really contains four main ingredients. Aside from those ingredients, it is supplemented with chelated minerals and vitamins to ensure nutritional balance. Overall, this formula provides 36% protein, 16% fat, and 4% fiber. It is highly digestible and full of natural flavor your cat will love.
- Pros: Single-source protein, limited number of ingredients, grain-free carbohydrates, highly digestible, antioxidant-rich, chelated minerals, rich in fiber for healthy digestion
- Cons: Not a chicken-free recipe, expensive to feed as a staple diet
Common Symptoms Of Food Allergy In Cats
- Chronic itching and skin inflammation
- Over-grooming, causing significant trauma wounds, abrasions, biting own skin
- Recurrent infections of both the skin and ears, red bumps and lesions
- Patches of hair loss
- Recurring skin bacterial infections or yeast infections
- Vomiting or diarrhoea
- Frequent bowel movements, flatulence or strain when they are defecating
- Poor growth in young kittens
- Coughing, wheezing and sneezing
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What To Look For In A Cat Food For Allergies
The goal in switching your cat to an elimination diet is to avoid any ingredients that might trigger an allergic reaction. Because cats can be allergic to many different ingredients, one thing you should keep in mind is that the shorter the ingredients list is, the less potential there is to trigger an allergy. Limited Ingredient Diet cat foods are specifically designed to contain a lower number of main ingredients, and many are made with novel proteins and carbohydrates.
Generally speaking, here are a few things to look for in cat food for allergies:
Now that you know the basics about cat food allergies treatment options, youre ready to start shopping for limited ingredient cat food. Keep reading to see our top picks for the best cat food for allergies.
What Does Hypoallergenic Cat Food Mean
This is a food that is less likely to result in allergies. Hypoallergenic cat foods require a vet prescription.
These foods are sometimes used by vets for an elimination diet as they contain hydrolyzed protein.
Due to the carbohydrate content and other nutritional values, they may not be suitable long term foods.
Learn More:
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What Food Is Good For Cats With Allergies
Because there are so many different ingredients in commercial cat food, it can be difficult to determine which ones to avoid.
If your vet doesnt know of any food that isnt likely to cause an allergic reaction, you can always try searching online or visiting a pet food store.
Heres a list of the top 7 cat foods for allergies that you can safely use.
Identifying The Cat Allergen
As you probably can tell, there is a wide range of culprits for food allergies and intolerances in cats. If your cat is showing symptoms of a reaction to food, the trick is trying to figure out precisely the ingredient causing the issue. Considering most regular cat foods are made up of a whole heap of common allergens, pinpointing the problem ingredient can be challenging.
Tests exist to test allergies from skin scrapings and saliva samples, but these tests are often unreliable, with some tests confirming allergies in pieces of fake fur! More often than not, your vet is going to recommend an elimination diet.
An elimination diet will usually start with moving your cat to an entirely novel and limited ingredient diet. Novel means a protein they have never ingested before, so there is no chance of an allergic reaction.
Once they are settled into this new diet, you can very slowly introduce new ingredients one at a time until the culprit causing an adverse reaction is pinpointed. Its important to only introduce a new ingredient after a few days, as an allergic reaction can occur anywhere from immediately after ingestion to up to a few days later.
Be aware that there is no true completely hypoallergenic product, as different cats will have different allergies, so no one product can exclude all possible allergens. Finding the right diet for your cat and identifying the problem allergen takes time and patience!
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Hypoallergenic Cat Food Versus Limited Ingredient Cat Food
There are hypoallergenic cat foods your vet can prescribe to eliminate possible allergens, but they are expensive, and some cats do not like them.
Even if you use hypoallergenic food for three months and discover food was the culprit, you will have to follow up with limited-ingredient foods like the ones weve highlighted below to make sure you know which protein causes the problem.
Talk To Your Vet About Cat Food Allergy Tests
This is where working with your vet comes back around as being really important. If the cat food allergy symptoms are moderate to severe, blood tests may give an indication of food allergies, on a shorter timeline. These serum IgE tests are a cat food allergy test option to discuss with your vet.
Kick the preservatives and switch to a natural hypoallergenic food diet, free from preservatives and additives
Whats a fail-safe method of a hypoallergenic diet? Feeding your cat something where you know exactly whats inside.
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Causes Of Wet Food Allergy In Cats
Food allergies are caused by an abnormally intense defensive response to a specific protein that makes up an ingredient in the cats diet which its immune system has identified as an intruder. The gastrointestinal tract houses approximately 60-70% of the cells that make up the feline immune system. Foods are broken down into the smallest possible parts, known as amino acid, by the process of digestion.
Once broken properly down into amino acids, these proteins are then absorbed by an enterocyte, a specialized type of white blood cell, which then transports the amino acid into the bloodstream for use by the body. Proteins that are incompletely broken down are identified as dangerous intruders rather than essential nutrients, and the enterocytes attack it rather than absorb it. When exposures to the protein are repeated, the immune system reaction becomes increasingly aggressive, and the symptoms of the allergy intensify.
Best Cat Food For Skin Allergies
If your cat is constantly itching, scratching, or showing signs of dandruff or excessively oily skin, then he may be suffering from skin allergies due to food intolerance.
To help your cats allergies while improving his coat, find cat food for skin allergies.
Make sure you steer clear of cat foods high in grains and additives and look for protein-rich foods with lots of fatty acids like omega-3 and omega-6 oils.
As we mentioned above, these fatty acids help to promote healthy skin and coat in your cat and can keep pesky skin allergies under control.
We also suggest this Instinct Limited Ingredient Diet Grain-Free Recipe Natural Cat Food & Toppers with Real Rabbit Meat*.
Rabbit is another source of protein that is rich in fatty acids and helps to promote a healthy skin and coat.
And, like rabbit meat, duck meat is rich in healthy fatty acids. This is why we recommend Natural Balance Limited Ingredient Dry Cat Food Green Pea and Duck* for your cat with skin allergies.
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What Foods Are Associated With Food Allergies
The foods typically associated with food allergies in cats include beef, fish, chicken, and dairy. A cat must have been exposed to a food ingredient before developing an allergy to it. An ingredient a cat has consumed for a long time can still cause an allergy at some point in the cats life. An animal cannot develop an allergy to a food that it has never been exposed to. Limited research has been performed in this area and there may be other allergens that have not yet been identified.
“An ingredient a cat has consumed for a long time can still cause an allergy at some point in the cats life.”
How To Choose Cat Food For Skin Allergies: The Buying Guide
How do you choose the cat food for skin allergies? You must consider many things, such as the brand name, price, and product quality. In addition, you should also consider whether it is suitable for your needs or not.
So how do you choose the right cat food for skin allergies? Here are some tips that you can use to help you find a good product:
What you Should Keep in Mind When Buying cat food for skin allergies
When shopping for a cat food for skin allergies, there are several things to consider. You need to think about the quality of the product, the price, and even how much it will benefit your life. However, you also need to keep these factors in mind:
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What Is The Best Cat Food For Allergies
Allergies are, unfortunately, more common in cats than people might think. In many cases, the cause of these allergies is the cat’s food itself. Common cat food allergies include “beef, fish, chicken, and dairy products.” Since most commercial cat foods contain one or more of these ingredients, the first step that veterinarians typically recommend is switching out the cat food. It’s a great, low-cost way to check whether or not that’s the root cause of your cat’s discomfort.
Let’s look at two of the best cat food for skin allergies , as well as other information on cat allergies themselves!
What Are Hydrolyzed Cat Foods And Why Do They Help Cats With Allergies
Hydrolyzed protein is a protein pre-digested into individual amino acids. The immune system may not recognize these proteins and wont produce antibodies that lead to allergic reactions.
It is also best practice to give your cat hydrolyzed cat food with novel proteins over common protein sources.
40% of dogs with a chicken allergy still react to hydrolyzed chicken protein when offered.
Hydrolyzed protein dry cat foods are usually prescription-based.
I recommend Blue Buffalo Natural HF Hydrolyzed Dry Cat Food as the best prescription hydrolyzed cat food choice. This food contains hydrolyzed pea and salmon protein, which are uncommon in a cats diet and offer relief.
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Common Allergens In Cat Food
The last topic Ill cover before giving you the scoop on my picks for the best hypoallergenic cat food is what you should be looking out for in terms of allergens.
The term food allergy is used to describe an abnormal immune-mediated reaction to an antigen within food,. A food allergy refers to the reaction caused by the immune system to a specific protein. The most common allergens are:
- Beef
What To Look For In Hypoallergenic Cat Food
- a novel protein is simply a protein your cats body is not familiar with. So, if your cat has only ever eaten chicken cat food, every other animal protein would be considered novel. The most common animal proteins in pet food include chicken, beef, and seafood. Some good choices for novel proteins include rabbit, duck, venison. Novel proteins are great hypoallergenic ingredients as they still offer the nutritional value cats need as carnivores. Still, they have no risk of causing allergic reactions as your cats immune system will not recognize them as a threat.
- Hydrolyzed ingredients hydrolyzing proteins in the act of breaking down the chemical bond of the protein, making it more digestible and less likely to be recognized by your cats immune system as an allergen. Some cats with particular protein allergies can ingest these problem proteins if they have been hydrolyzed.
- Limited ingredients a LID is often used to tackle allergies in cats. Many cat foods contain multiple proteins, carbohydrates, and vitamin sources, making identifying allergens very difficult. Limited ingredients can help pinpoint and increase digestibility.
- Natural additives all pet foods will have additives of some kind. These are added to increase palatability and preserve food. Some of these are of unnatural origin and can be the source of allergies. Look for natural ingredients to act as preservatives such as vitamin C and E and rosemary products.
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Royal Canin Veterinary Diet Hydrolyzed Protein Cat Treats
If your cat is on a hydrolyzed protein food trial or a restricted diet, it does not necessarily mean they have to forgo treats. Available with your veterinarians authorization, these treats from Royal Canin get rave reviews from people with cats on special diets. Prescription required.
Royal Canin Veterinary Diet Hydrolyzed Protein Cat Treats
The hydrolyzed-protein treats are safe for many cats on restricted diets.
Checking For A Food Sensitivity
While youll see quick tests for cat food allergies advertised online, the Cummings Veterinary Center at Tufts states unequivocally that they dont work. Talk with your vet instead.
If your vet suspects your cat has a food allergy, they might ask you to switch your cat completely to a special prescription diet, called a hypoallergenic diet, for up to three months. The hypoallergenic diet consists of cat food made up of hydrolyzed proteinsthe proteins have been broken down so the cats immune system cant detect any allergenic components. If the allergy symptoms disappear in the hypoallergenic diet but then return when the cat goes back to regular food, its pretty clear your cat has a food allergy.
At that point, your vet may ask you to go back and forth between the hypoallergenic diet and various limited-ingredient foods to try to figure out which protein was the culprit in the allergic reaction.
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