If you are allergic to cats, are you likely to be allergic to chinchillas?

[PanicPants]

However, I'm not allergic to dogs (not sure why cats and not dogs!).

So we have been thinking about chinchillas and one of my concerns is that I may be allergic to the fur (I'm thinking it looks quite similiar to cat fur)

Any ideas? TIA

pmsl - the pigtails are very disturbing.

lol ND- how pissed off does he look?

Wouldn't you look pissed off if someone did that to you?!

Norbert - cheer up matey! We all have bad hair(less) days.

Let it grow a bit and you too can have lovely pigtails like me

Panic Pants -sorry for hi-jacking your thread with crazy cat pictures last night.

By way of an apology:

1. Some info on chinchillas and allergies

2.A very serious looking Chinchilla who wasn't amused with all the cat pictures

pmsl at the chinchilla piccie but yes, apologies here too, PP. I must say you took it very well - on the chin-chilla some might say

Seriously, though, all the best if you do get one. Never had one myself but knew a family who had one & they were so attached to it that the dh was in floods of tears when it passed away.

Off to knit some more bonnets now...

Thanks for the info nornert - you must have been feeling quilty

Anyway this has been far more fun then actually getting a chinchilla!

Noebert

Honestly - norbert!!!! Ds is sat on my lap!

dont know

i am severaly allergic to cats ,but dont know anyone who has a chinchilla

We had a chinchilla, she was lovely, had her for 7 years, she use to come out of her cage every day and run around the house trying to chew evreything wooden! My Dad was allergic to cats, and even our dog used to set him off if he'd had a break from her for a week or so, although he soon got used to her again, he never had a problem with our chinchilla though.
Lovely pets but they do need alot of looking after, things to chew to keep their teeth down (apple wood is good), ours still had to have her teeth clipped a couple of times when she got old as they stopped growing straight.
Sand baths for their coat, regular runs out of the cage, when you have to watch really carefully as they do love to chew. Specialist diet etc.
Ours used to go in our rabbit run with our rabbit in the summer months, they got on really well, the cinchilla used to sit on top of the rabbit!
They are lovely pets, I'd love to get another one when dd is older.

Dont chinchillas need an enormous cage to be happy though?

we have just got guinea pigs - they are living in a fairly enormous home made indoor cage - I thought chinchillas needed even more room

Cats have fur, dogs have hair, that is why you can be allergic to one and not the other.

Chinchillas also have fur so I reckon they could cause your problems.

BongelA - you obviously have not read all the preceding nonsense about slobbery and hairless cats, or you'd know that the saliva is the problem.

TBH, don't blame you & am a wee bit jealous you have better things to do than look at pictures of bald cats

Am very disappointed btw at the lack of pictures of hairless cats from the last few days

Now look, PP, it's late, it's a school night and I am not the sort of person to sit up late posting silly photos of hairless cats.

Off to bed now but in any case, I do think it's a tad unfair that we keep picking on the cats:

here

pmsl bella

Now look, it's late (again), I have a cold, it's a school night and anyway, I have changed my identity to avoid being recognised:

here

And this is what I'd like for supper...

here

lol bella!

allergy to cats salivia?

I'm madly allergic to all animals. Even if they have been in the house days before I am in it, and have since gone, I still puff up and wheeze. Wouldn't saliva have dried up by then?

And if a cat scratches me, all round the scratch swells up and itches, but licking me doesn't do this

Hi fizzbuzz - you still teaching?

agree fizzbuzz - the cats dont have to be in house for me to blotch and get sore eyss

It's the proteins in the saliva, isn't it? And only certain specific proteins in certain animals that set you off.