Hi,

I have a pet that has food allergies and major skin problems for almost a yr
now.
Yours is a difficult decision and all I can do is tell you my experience so
perhaps it can
help you decide what's best for Malachi.

After 10 months of going to regular vets, I decided they weren't helping my sick
cat
but making her worse due to the medications prescribed. (steroids,
antihistamine,
etc...) Her immune system is just not working right and it seems like she's
developing allergies to everything that used to work before. So I recently got
her to a
specialist vet that practices multiple modalities that are homeopathic and
allopathic.

After my initial visit with this vet, she said my cat has one of the worst case
of
allergies she's ever seen and she's been in the business a long time. She put
my cat
on a special homemade diet and stressed DO NOT allow her to have ANY
vaccinations!

My personal opinion would be if yours currently has immune issues, it would not
be a
good idea to have vaccinations. The immune system is already working overtime
due
to the allergies, you do not want to put it over the edge especially with the
allergies
not under control yet! Just be extra careful about letting him out & about
until he's
better and can have his shot.

Regarding food allergy, you should only feed him ONE novel protein diet for at
least
6-12 weeks. Goat, venison, and rabbit are "exotic" meat and you do not want to
expose your pet to all this now. Just pick one type of meat and stick with it.
The
theory is that when an animal is allergic to something, a new kind of meat that
the
animal has never had before is usually introduced exclusively. Since it has
never had
this type of meat before, there's a good chance that it will not develop
allergies to it
at that time; this gives the immune system a chance to recover. If you give
yours all
these exotic meat at the same time, then you will run out of exotic meat later
on to
feed him should he still have allergy problems and you need to do food trials.
The
only other exotic meat I could think of right now that's not on your list is
kangaroo
and ostrich - good luck trying to find those! Oh yes, read the labels! One
frozen
raw package I saw said it's venison but the ingredients says it also has another
animal's organs included in there. I couldn't use it and had to ban frozen raw
all
together for my cat.

As far as relief, try applying aloe vera externally to help with inflammation
and skin
healing as needed. Make sure the aloe vera does not have sodium benzoate in it;
it's toxic to cats.

As far as itch, you can give omega 3 and omega 6 supplements. They do wonders
with skin and itch. I was using flax seed oil and was told by my current vet
that the
form I have does not have an active form that cats can use. The brand that's
prescribed for my cat is called "Eskimo 3". It needs to be refrigerated once
opened or
will lose it's effectiveness. BTW, some cats are allergic to grains & corn so
make sure
yours is not getting that. If yours is on steroids, let me know and I can send
you
more links for alternatives to steroids. Here's a great link to check out:

Food Allergy Myths
http://www.veterinarypartner.com/Content.plx?P=A&A=468&S=1&SourceID=30

Good luck!

Lisa