Picture this. You are a cat person, and you grew up with cats as a child. Heck. You even have one in your house right now.
One evening after a long day at work, as you are cuddling your furry friend, you start sneezing, and your eyes start getting red.
You are worried. Can you develop allergies to cats later in life? You wonder.
Like food allergies, cat allergies can develop later in life, but you shouldn’t rush to concluding that you have the allergies.
The first thing you should do is visit an allergy clinic, and the allergist will do a skin or blood test to confirm that you are truly suffering from cat allergies.
How can you control allergies?
After the doctor has confirmed that you are suffering from cat allergies, you should develop ways to protect yourself from them. Luckily, there are plenty of ways you can do it, with the most popular ones being:
Using medications
There are plenty of medications you can use to control the symptoms:
Decongestants: Like the over-the-counter pseudoephedrine and other allergy drugs, decongestants contain Claritin, Allegra-D, and Zyrtec-D that come in handy at easing the allergy symptoms.
Antihistamines: The beauty of most antihistamines is they are available over the counter, so you can easily access them. The most popular options include: fexofenadine, loratadine, diphenhydramine, and azelastine.
Nasal steroid sprays: These are meant to ease the asthma symptoms brought about by the condition. The most popular steroid sprays you can use are: fluticasone, budesonide, and triamcinolone.
Allergy shots: Although, they aren’t the first line of cat allergy treatment options as they aren’t often effective and take longer to complete, they can be of great value to some people.
Reducing your exposure to cats
The other way you can control the cat allergy symptoms is by reducing your exposure to the cats. Some of the ways you can reduce your exposure to these felines include:
Don’t touch, hug or kiss the cats: Even if you are single and it’s only the cat you have with you, you should avoid hugging, touching, or kissing them regardless of the inclination.
Be cautious of your cat-loving friends: Since you are a cat person, you most likely have a couple of cat-loving friends, right? After confirming that you are suffering from cat allergies, you need to be cautious when interacting with them.
Even if they don’t come visiting with their cats, chances are they have cat dander on their clothes and luggage, and this can make you sick when you hug or get too close to them.
Have a separate room for the cat: If you are lucky to have a large house with many rooms, consider having a separate room for your cat. This will minimize the contact, and at the same time, it will be easy to clean for the cat.
Get rid of the cat: If you aren’t too attached to the cat, you will be better off getting rid of the cat from your house. No, you don’t need to kill the cat. Instead, give the cat to a cat-loving person. The person can be your friend or even a family member. You only need to ensure they love cats and they will take good care of it.
If you don’t know a person that would love a cat in real life, there are plenty of online resources that help people swap cats and other pets, and you can use these to your advantage.
It will be painful to part with a loved one, but it will save you plenty and expensive trips to an allergy specialist Germantown MD seeking medications and consultations.