"Ophelia" <O@nix.co.uk> wrote in message
news:5k7upfF2e3joU1@mid.individual.net...
> Kate Connally wrote:
>
>>> Hi Ophelia,
>>>
>>> I'm allergic to cats, too. Although my reactions are usually
>>> limited to sneezes and wheezes, not the life-threatening,
>>> turning-blue, trips to the emergency room stuff.
>
> Hi Kate,
>
> I have chronic asthma and the dander stops me breathing:(
> I daren't take the risk and it is a shame because cats always come to me
> and
> look for their wee heads to be scratched:))
>

Hmmm, when I was growing-up I was extremely allergic to cats. They'd
scratch me and I'd swell-up. Under the best of circumstances I'd look like
I'd be suffering a perptual bout of hay-fever. Then during the winter of
1988, when I was in college, I was 'forced' to adopt an utterly woe-begon
Seal-point Burmese who had been living in my stairwell. I could ignore her
until there was a foot of snow on the ground and the temperature was below
zero.

So I let her in to my apartment. And I suffered about three weeks of agony.
But it was grim outside for a stray cat, so I suffered through it. I bathed
her and I groomed her and gradually the sympthoms faded. Until the cat
could sleep on the pillow next to my head without incident.

Fast forward nineteen years. I've been adopted by my second stray cat - a
once three-pound, now five-pound shorthair who had been living under my deck
after she'd been abandoned by her previous owners. And for the last two
months the little cat has been my 'shadow' - I work at home so she has not
left my side for more than six or seven hours. Her attitude seems to be
that I'm goddamned lucky she found me when she did and how did I ever manage
to get along without her?

<grin>

And I haven't had a single allergic incident in all that time. So it is
possible to 'overcome' allergies. I did.

MJB