Gesundheit!

Environmental and medical management may allow some allergic people to still have cats.

By Marty Becker, DVM, and Janice Willard, DVM | Posted: Thu Jun 3 00:00:00 PDT 2004

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If you or a family member's reaction to cats is severe or life threatening, you may have no choice but to find a new home for your cat. This can be an agonizing decision, but one should never put their life or welfare at risk. And if you know of someone who has had to make this decision, be sure to offer them your compassion and understanding.

Hope for the Future
There is a lot more that we don't know about allergies. This is one area in medicine where there are few absolutes and no easy answers. A person's reaction to the cat allergen is highly variable - even the same person over a lifetime may show different reactions.

Environmental and medical management can allow some allergic people to still have cats in their lives. But it is important to recognize that for some people this would not be enough.

The good news is that science is making progress all the time, and one day cat allergies may be a thing of the past.

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