Often also called Miliary Eczema, affected cats have a combination of numerous tiny scabs, hair loss, hypersensitivity to touch, scratching, excessive licking and irritation. The cause is usually an allergy to flea bites. Even just one bite from a flea will produce this terrible allergic reaction.
I avoid the use of drugs wherever possible as they generally get rid of the symptoms without addressing the underlying cause. Allergies are not cortisone or anti-histamine deficiencies any more than a headache is an aspirin deficiency! I use nutrition as the most important part of any treatment.
Why?
The foundation of health is nutrition, providing the nutrients needed for the body to continuously repair and regenerate used and damaged cells. Remember, the body is made of cells, each with its own special function. For example, liver cells are all clustered together in an orderly manner to form the liver, each cell performing its task in conjunction with the other liver cells.
If the nutrients consumed are of poor quality, the repair and regeneration of cells will be of the same poor quality, so the body gradually degenerates. The regulatory mechanisms also start to malfunction and all sorts of bizarre reactions result, allergies being one.
It is not natural for cats to have fleas nor is it natural for them to have a violent reaction to a flea bite, often leading them to lick off their own fur and scratch themselves raw. These symptoms are evidence that something is desperately wrong, so something has to change!
Treatment
The first thing to do is to change the food. Feed your cats with raw meat and bone mixed with a teaspoon of liquidized greens and 1/4 teaspoon of Pet Plus. Any fleas will go. The cat’s immune system will gradually recover, the skin will be able to repair and the excessive scratching and licking will cease.
It takes time for this recovery to take place. The last cat I treated took 3 weeks to show signs of improvement, but then recovered completely in 2 months. Her fur is still growing back, so it’ll be a while before she looks completely normal, as she had licked off nearly all her fur, poor thing. Also, the owner couldn’t believe that such simple changes could make any difference, so she was a bit slow to get onto 100% raw food! Her cat was relying on the Pet Plus for the first few weeks as she was still receiving processed food. As soon as the owner saw the improvements in her cat after 3 weeks of adding the Pet Plus for Cats to the processed food, she changed her onto raw food with the Pet Plus.
Prevention
Wouldn’t it be better to feed raw food and Pet Plus from the start and prevent these horrible ailments? Just do it!! You know it makes sense!
How?
There are numerous frozen minced meat and bone mixtures available both online and from the pet shop. Prize Choice is one you can buy in pet shops. Cats tend to like the rabbit, chicken, tripe (just once a week!), fish and lamb. The tripe has no bone in it, but it is rich in other nutrients and really smells!! Great for the cat, not so good for the house! Online, you can get raw meat and bone minces form Natural Instinct and Darlings Real Dog Food, all great for cats!
They also thrive on raw chicken wings which you can give every day along with the minced meat and bone, liquidized greens and Pet Plus. This helps to keep their teeth in good health. It’s good to give them some raw heart once a week too.
About Susanna
Hi
My cat has Feline Miliary Dermatitis. However she also has a urinary tract disorder and is on a special diet of feline urinary s/o.
How can I help her. I cannot change her diet as she needs this to eliminate the symptoms of her disorder. But what can I do for her dermatitis. Can she have the pet plus with her urinary s/o diet?
Thanks
Hi Sarah,
Yes, Pet Plus is fine with any diet. The micronutrients in the Pet Plus are used by the body whatever the diet is.
Let me know how you get on.
Suzi
I’ve been feeding raw at my holistic pet sanctuary for several years and I really appreciate that you help educate people on the importance of natural diet. I am hoping now you could assist me since I feel a little stuck. Usually I can “fix” anything when it comes to a chronically ill pet, but I could use some help, if you don’t mind.
I have one aprox 13 year cat with MD. She was vaccinated for the first 5 years of her life and has been vaccine-free and raw-fed for the past 7 years. I stopped all pesticides about 5 year ago. She had been virtually flea-free for the past 5 years with only the occasional flea found. She had no allergic reactions to those fleas that were occasionally found.
A few months ago, she developed miliary dermatitis. She licked the base of her tail and belly bare. She went in for a dental extraction and had a reaction to the pain meds so she had another blood panel to see what was going on. Basic labs looked normal the day after the procedure, but two weeks later, when she seemed to be doing well outside of the pruritis, BUN and T4 were found to be elevated. Pruritis increase with bumps spreading. She spent 2 weeks in an E-collar and had 3 days of prednisone and I applied one drop of advantage- both were done out of complete desperation and I would not have done them if I didn’t think her life was in danger. The areas healed and E-collar was removed for about 10 days but then she started chewing at herself and she had to wear the collar again.
Not that is has anything to with the allergy directly, but her BUN and T4 were still elevated when the second flare up of MD occured. BUN had come down since I added a few kidney-helpers to her diet. After researching probiotics and how they can help kidney failure patients, I now believe now that her BUN shot up because the probiotics she’d been on prior to her procedure were wiped out of her system by the antibiotics. Perhaps her T4 shot up to compensate for the decreased kidney function. I expect both to be back to normal within a month.
As scary as “hyperthyroidism” and “kidney failure” might sound to some, I have a lot of experience treating these naturally with great success. My greatest concern right now is the dermatitis. I need to keep her stress down and get to the root of this allergy. She’s in an E-collar until I can figure out how to help her. The E-collar isn’t helping her stress levels.
I’m not sure if your pet plus is indicated on top of or instead of some of the supplements I am currently offering, so please advise. I feed her a raw chicken diet which is void of necks (so as not to include a thyroid gland) and the following supplements:
Broccoli
Azodyl (only giving SID since the piling is stressful)
Renatropin
Astro’s CRF oil
Epakitin (phos levels were not elevated but I add a small amount because I don’t think it can hurt)
Brewer’s yeast
Do you think the Pet Plus could replace the Azodyl? The manufacturer of Azodyl makes such a big deal about refrigeration and their enteric capsule. I’ve used probiotics for years and they’ve seemed effective without refrigeration or any enteric coatings. Granted with CKD, we could be dealing with extreme acidity. Any thoughts on this?
Much Appreciation from Nikol and the pets at Luckydog Sanctuary =)
Hi Nikol,
Thanks for your detailed description and great analysis! I’m delighted to see you reversing elevated T4 and BUN naturally. These blood tests are just a snap shot really, just showing the levels at that precise moment; it can all change so quickly!
So, some suggestions to help you. I’d try some different food, like fish or rabbit or lamb, rather than chicken all the time, as they probably wouldn’t eat the same thing every day in the wild. I think variety is important.
Pet Plus could be used as your source of Brewer’s yeast, probiotics (instead of Azodyl), greens (instead of broccoli) and essential fatty acids (instead of Astro’s CRF oil). If you’re feeding raw meat and bone, I wouldn’t have thought you’d need the Epakitin. You could feed a bit of offal including kidney tissue to replace the renatropin. They’d get all that in the wild by eating the whole carcass, so you could consider getting frozen mice from the pet shop (they sell them to feed snakes usually).
Aloe Vera is a very useful natural anti-inflammatory which may help to soothe her skin too. You can apply it topically, which they usually lick off, so they get it systemically as well.
Hope that helps.
Best wishes,
Suzi
my cat Ollie developed a bad case of miliary ezcema 2years ago. He was treated homeopathically and the condition cleared. Last year the rash returned but wasn’t so severe, treated with the same remedy including pulex and it cleared again. It has returned recently quite badly and I am using the same remedies and think he is improving, fur ball vomiting is frequent when he is like this.
He has raw chicken, raw fish,. “Aplaws” dried nibbles and their sachets of chicken with veg as a standby. As a kitten I started him on raw chicken wings but he won’t eat them now. I have given him brewers yeast daily from an early age.
I haven’t used flea treatment other than herbal “Scratch” which I use mainly as a spray wherever he sleeps. I brush and comb him daily and haven’t seen any fleas. I’d be grateful for any advice
Regards
Lillian Winter
Dear Lillian,
Thanks for your query.
I’d suggest you stop giving him anything cooked or processed to eat and give him 100% raw meat and bone with some liquidized greens and Pet Plus mixed in. If he has been on chicken and fish for a while, try some rabbit or lamb. The Pet Plus has omega 3 fatty acids in it but you may want to add a teaspoonful of flax oil to his food. This will help him to get rid of the fur balls too and prevent them from accumulating in his stomach again, by helping him to pass all the fur he swallows.
There are several makes of frozen minced up meat and bone here in the UK. Natural Instincts, Darlings Real Dog food (they also do cat food!) and Prize Choice are the 3 I use. The trouble with any processed food is that the nutrients are largely destroyed by the cooking process and they often contain cheap carbohydrate fillers which are of no use at all to a truly carnivorous cat! Many biscuits contain gluten too, a very common allergen, so all are best avoided. Nature knows best, so I recommend you follow the natural raw food diet completely.
If he has no fleas, you probably don’t need to use the Scratch any more. I wonder if he may have developed a sensitivity to it as his skin will have been in contact with it when it was sore and inflamed. I expect you’ve already washed his bedding and rinsed it thoroughly to make sure there are no chemicals there.
Does he have clean, chemical-free water (i.e. bottled or filtered) to drink? The chemicals in tap water are no good to anyone and could be exacerbating his skin irritation as his body may be excreting some chemicals through his skin which then irritate the skin.
Let me know if I can be of further help.
Best wishes,
Suzi
I realize this is an old posting, but I’ll leave my question anyway since it’s related, in the hopes that you can still answer:
I adopted my male cat a couple of years ago from the Humane Society and I’ve been feeding him raw ever since. I use Nature’s Variety, which is readily available frozen at my local pet store. Fall 2011 he started to lose patches of hair and get scabby and very itchy all over. I should mention that I had also adopted a second cat the year before. Anyway, I took my boy to the vet and she immediately diagnosed an allergy to something–he didn’t appear to have fleas but she wanted me to put him on flea meds anyway and she also gave him a steroid shot. I was sceptical, but I went home and inspected our female cat, and to my surprise, she did have a few fleas on her.
So I started the flea meds, and a couple of weeks later I had to bring him back for a follow-up steroid shot. By that time he had developed a swollen bottom lip, which my vet said made her think it was more than just fleas. But we first had to be rid of the fleas to be sure. Eventually we did get rid of all the fleas and things seemed to be going okay for awhile. Until–two weeks ago the swollen lip returned. Uh oh. Now, I know my vet had said if it came back it would be time for an elimination diet.
I am very frustrated because he’s always eaten raw food (my vet doesn’t approve of that, BTW). If I take him back to her, I’m sure she’s going to suggest some Science Diet garbage and I don’t want to go that route. I am working under the assumption that this CANNOT be a grain allergy because his food has always been grain-free. I am also assuming that it’s a chicken allergy, because that is one of the most common allergens and also the variety I’ve fed him the most often (probably too often, in retrospect, I should have been rotating more frequently).
So, I have switched to the lamb variety for now. I realize I may have to stick it out for awhile before I see an improvement, assuming I have targeted the right allergy in the first place. I don’t like the risk attached to the steroid shots, but do you think he should have another one, to get his allergies calmed down a bit? Or will his swollen lip eventually go down on it’s own once the chicken works it’s way out of his system? I wish there was a way to allergy test him, instead of shooting in the dark, but if there is my vet doesn’t offer it.
Thanks for your question. You could use natural anti-inflammatories to get the allergic over-reaction to calm down a bit, to buy you some time to eliminate the allergen(s). Aloe vera comes as a drink and as a topical cream / gel. Use it in both forms. Just rub it well into the inflamed areas, then he’ll lick it off, but most will have been absorbed by then. Give him the drink by mouth usually by syringe.
Omega 3 oils are also anti-inflammatory, so flax oil or a whole fish oil, especially krill oil. You’ll probably be able to mix the krill oil with his food.
Try feeding him on raw fish, whole. Not sure what’s available in US, but here, I give mine mackerel, sprats, sardines…whatever small oily fish is in season.
Parasites are repelled by B vitamins, so a source of B vits in his diet would be very helpful. We have Brewer’s Yeast in Pet Plus for exactly that reason, as a flea deterrent. That’d be good for the other cat too. In fact, give them both oily fish too.
Foodwise, you need to feed him food his system has never seen before, so again, fish would be good. There is often chicken in the lamb minces for the bone content, so read the label thoroughly. Rabbit is another useful raw meat and bone mince for them, but look out for added chicken there too. You can also buy frozen mice (snake food in pet shops) which I expect they’d love, especially if you tie a string to its tail and whizz it past his nose at speed!
Also, make sure they have clean, fresh, chemical free (so filtered / bottled) water every day. We are all better off without those noxious chemicals which supposedly purify our water!
The swollen lip could be the mental gland that’s infected or inflamed. That might well subside with the aloe vera and omega 3 anti-inflammatory action. The trouble with steroids is not just the side effects, but also they just mask the symptoms and suppress the ‘disease’ process, so best avoided if you can, but on humane grounds, use it if absolutely necessary.
Allergy testing is hopelessly inaccurate, so don’t waste your money!!
Check for other potential allergens, like washing liquids, carpet shampoos, laundry liquids, softeners, deodorant sprays. Use all natural household products. Have you decorated anywhere…paint fumes maybe…perhaps a neighbour doing stuff to a car or something. Farmer’s spraying fields??
Let me know how you get on.
Suzi