4 year old Tabby who is impossibly itchy// please help!!
Looking for advice. My 4 year old tabby cat recently developed what can only be described as a bad allergy (maybe?) to something we aren't sure what it is.
This story has a lot of moving parts to it so bare with me.
We moved from my parents house into a new build (ish). An old garage that we completely converted into a brand new apartment. The only pieces of the old garage that were left were the concrete slab, and the framework from 2 of the walls. Everything else including all of the remaining walls, drywall, roof, flooring and furniture is brand new. This was in the beginning of March of this year.
About a month later, I noticed on April 10th of this year that she had a hotspot on her front leg from excessive licking. At this point, we figured it was an isolated incident. We found a sweater to put her in that covered the hotspot completely. Her vet appointment was scheduled for 1 week later, and it was at that time we realized the sweater was not going to work because the spot was saturated from her licking it, and little bumps appeared all around the hotspot area. So she had to go into a hard cone. The vet thought this was contact dermatitis from her licking over the spot. She was put on steroids, antibiotics and isoderm ointment. After the hotspot healed completely, about 1-2 weeks later, we took her out of the cone and within 5 minutes a new rash/hotspot had formed from her licking her leg.
It is now the 8th of June and she has not had any relief, it has only gotten worse. If we take her out of the cone, within 30 seconds she is excessively licking and her skin becomes bright pink. I can feel that there are bumps on her legs, her neck and her ears, which are always itchy as she is constantly scratching the cone trying to find relief. She is so itchy that she will force my hand into her cone to itch her ears for her.
I also want to mention that over the course of the last 8 weeks I have taken her to the vet about 5 times. She has had tick,flea and mite medication and she has had a skin scraping done which was negative so it is not any kind of little critter. The vet believes it is a new allergy to something which I guess is common for cats to develop randomly as they age.
She also has had diarrhea since about week 3-4 of this going on. We thought that was due to the steroid, but she has been off the steroid now and it is still an issue.
She was put on a hypoallergenic soy based diet that the vet sold us as I guess chicken/poultry and other proteins can cause this kind of an allergic reaction. She has been on this diet for about 1 week now. I know that the diet can take a long time, but I'm just wondering (begging, really) if anybody has had similar issues and found out what it was.
Our hypothesis' are some sort of random food allergy that she just so happened to develop a month after we moved, some sort of allergy to something in the new house, an allergy to fragrance, or some sort of allergy to something outside as we do not have air conditioning yet so the windows are open a lot of the time. But if I am missing something, please tell me.
I also just want to mention that she is an indoor cat only and never goes outside.
Any advice is welcome.