My Cat was losing hair - was a fish allergy!

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Hopefully this might help someone else whose otherwise healthy cat is losing hair. My lovely black fluff ball seemingly went through phases of losing hair at the back (up back legs and tail). I usually always get the same brand (or a few brands) food but have always changed the flavour not really paying attention.

Well I recently bought food in bulk in fish flavour that my cats have been having for months on end. I noticed one of my cats was losing hair more than ever. She was starting to go bald at the back completely and I didn’t link it to the food at all. Was going to make a vets appointment when I was talking to my neighbour about it who said her friends cat had it and she spent hundreds at the vets getting tests, trying different treatments and turns out all along the cat was allergic to fish.

I immediately got rid of the cats current food and bought chicken flavour and sure enough my cats fur started to return. After nearly 2 months off the fish her fur is completely back and I am so happy!! Thank goodness for my neighbour!

I just wanted to share that In case any other owners have noticed this on their cats.
My cat never objects to the food but funnily enough she does reject fresh salmon whereas my other cat will scoff it up!

Our cat was the same. She looked awful. Vet said it was fleas but we knew she was free of them. I changed her food to Iams and she is a different cat. Looks great. I'm glad you've had the same result x

Hi Op, when you say your cat was losing its hair.. was it pulling it out or was it falling out naturally? My cat is on a 3rd summer of pulling out all his fur, and vets are clueless as to why. I've changed his food brands repeatedly, but not tried excluding a certain type.

Glad your cat is back to normal !

This is interesting!! Our girl is all black and has bald heels. I just assumed its where she rests most of her weight on however noticed recently the fur is growing back. This correlates with her eating a special food for cystitis which is beef. She normally gets fish flavours!

Good grief, that's interesting. Our cat is also losing fur recently, but he's definitely been pulling it out so I was looking more at stress factors. But if it's possible than an allergy is making him itchy, that would have the same effect. He doesn't eat much fish, but I suppose it could be any foodstuff causing a reaction.

My cat was allergic to the all chicken diet I was feeding her and had terrible dandruff. The food company suggested I cut out all the chicken and add some goat and venison, and it cleared up within a week.

To those that asked, no she wasn’t visibly pulling out the hair it just seemed to be falling out. She was almost completely bald at the back. I’m so pleased to see it back!!