lose of weight

Question
HI:   I have a 12 year old female tabby cat which was over weight.   So i put her on food to reduce her weight which it did.   But now the problem is i've taken her off of the food and she's still loosing weight and now i just noticed about 3 weeks ago that she has sores on along her backside.   She seems to be digging into her skin and drawing blood.   Since then i was told she could be allergic to gluten.   So i just in the last week removed gluten from her food and have been apply waterless shampoo to her back and the sores do seem to be going away.   So my question is could having a allergy be causing my cat to lose weight?  Also could a allergy be causing her digestive system  to be all screwed up.   She sometimes vomites up certain food.   Tks

Answer
Anna,

This is a tough question to answer because there are other medical issues that might be causing her to lose weight given her age. Vomiting can be related to many medical problems including things like food intolerance. The sores on your kitty's backside could have a number of different causes and it's well worth having a vet look at them to determine whether or not they need treatment beyond what you've been doing at home as well as what may have caused them.

I would suggest checking out www.catinfo.org, it's a website created by a veterinarian by the name of Dr. Lisa Pierson who has a very common sense approach to teaching pet parents about the nutritional needs of their feline companions. You will find recipes for an appropriate homemade diet on her site, I feed it to my cats and they do very well on it - if your baby is sensitive to commercial foods this may be the way to go. As for the weight loss I think it would be a good idea to get some blood work done to rule out things like thyroid dysfunction, kidney disease, diabetes or other medical issues common in older cats. If you have any further cat related questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me again - I'm more than happy to help in any way that I can.