Meg's underweight status has been a concern of ours from the start. All three of these cats eat the same thing at the same times. Jack packs on pounds like he's trying to win a world record while his sister looked worse than cats you outside of dumpsters. It didn't make sense.
Back before Christmas Meg started throwing up. A lot. Many times a day. It was worrisome and disgusting. We found cat puke everywhere. We would be woken up by the sound of her yakking in our room. No one wanted her to sit on their lap. She was that volatile.
A trip to the vet got us nowhere with the vomiting. He prescribed hairball medicine and sent us on our way. Hairball medicine is tuna-flavored Vaseline. Meg would lap it up and she seemed to be getting better. She was down to puking one every other day. Much more manageable.
Then a few weeks ago, Meg developed scabs all over her head and neck. She would scratch them open and they would bleed. She was losing hair in little knots that I found all over the house. She wouldn't let you pet her, I presume because her skin hurt.
"She's going to the vet next week", I declared. This was a Wednesday.
The next morning, Meg had licked down to bare skin a nickel sized patch on her neck. It was raw and disturbing to look at. She had to get to the vet.
By that evening when everyone was home, Meg came out of wherever she was hiding for the day to show up what she had done. All of the hair the one side of her neck was gone. Wherever she could reach she had licked herself bare. It was red, wet and awful.
We got into the vet the next morning.
The vet still didn't have any answers. But he suggested it might be a food allergy and suggested we put her on a food with no grain in it. I did a little research and our littlr cat had every classic symptom of a food allergy.
She's been on her fancy-pants catfood since May 21st. After three days she had no more scabs and the fur on her neck started coming back. Today she's still bony, but she feels heavier. She hasn't puked either. I was worried that he tubby brother might try to get her food, but we keep it away from him. She tells us when she's hungry. She knows without a doubt that she gets special food now and doesn't even bother with the other stuff. It's lucky the smartest of our cats is the one who developed this.
