Airbnb renter allergic to cats found his £1,000 rental was full of cat hair

NEWS AND COMMENT: this is a nice little story about Airbnb and the shedding of hair by domestic cats which is something that a person allergic to cats cannot tolerate!

This person, Graeme Dodd, from Perth & Kinross in Scotland was renting an Abu Dhabi apartment under an Airbnb scheme. He agreed a rental of £1,000 for 10 nights. He arrived at the apartment in Abu Dhabi with his wife and two children.

Graeme Dodd is allergic to cats! He found that the Airbnb rental flat was covered in hair and could not accept it. Comment: there appears to be no attempt to hoover the flat or get rid of the hair.

It appears that Graeme Dodd wanted to cancel the Airbnb offered and the host offered to help by finding alternative accommodation and they agreed to refund the original booking.

However, the alternative apartment was much more expensive costing £3,700 even though it was in a similar location and of a similar size. Graeme Dodd and his family were offered other alternatives but they were either too far away or of a lower standard.

Airbnb then decided to charge Mr Dodd "for both bookings". It's not clear what that means but it is clear that Mr Dodd's 10 day stay worked out at £4,700 which was totally unacceptable to him.

Mr Dodd struggled to resolve the dispute and he wrote to Katherine Denham of The Times newspaper who unsurprisingly managed to obtain a full reimbursement of £2,700 together with a £1,000 refund for the original booking meaning that his ten-day initial charge of £4,700 was reduced to £1000 which was the original price of the rental agreement. 💕😍

Lesson learned? Nothing really except for the landlord who clearly did not offer up his flat to an Airbnb client in an appropriate condition. It appears that he got sloppy. The cat hair belonged to his/her cat! 😸

But if the landlord i.e. the flat's owner lived within a 30 minute drive from the apartment it would have been better, perhaps, if (s)he had simply turned up and hoovered the place top to bottom to remove the cat hair.

Source: The Times hard copy newspaper. Thanks and well done Katherine Denham.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Americans spend 90% of their time indoors enhancing the possibility of an allergy to their cat

I was surprised to learn that Americans spend 90% of their time indoors. I was also somewhat surprised to learn that the worldwide market for the treatment of an allergy to the domestic cat is worth US$4.2 billion! And the forecast indicates that the market will grow by 6.3% by 2031 reaching US$7.8 billion.

Image: MikeB

RELATED: WHY does the cat allergen Fel D1 cause an allergic reaction?

That's over four thousand million US dollars spent on medications for an allergy to cats. It's a big market and one reason why it is growing is because, as mentioned, more people are spending more time indoors where they are surrounded by cat dander (dried saliva and dead skin) both floating in the air and on furniture. The cat allergen is on cat dander and cat dander has the ability to stay airborne for a long time and float around the home.

You probably know that the cat allergen is a protein called Fel D1 which is in the saliva of domestic cats. The current best preventative step to squash the feline cat allergen is Purina's LiveClear dry cat food which coats the protein and prevents it having an effect on people who are sensitive to the allergen.

RELATED: Review: Purina LiveClear Allergen Reducing Sterilised Adult Turkey cat food.

There is also a greater awareness of an allergy to the domestic cat. This has probably resulted in more people coming forward having self-diagnosed that they are allergic to cats whereas in the past they may have thought they were suffering from hay fever or have a poor immune system resulting in a series of common colds. The symptoms are not that dissimilar between an allergic reaction and a mild cold or hay fever particularly.

An allergy to a cat is in the top three causes of respiratory allergies. I was also surprised to learn that the World Health Organisation and the International Union of Immunological Societies "recognise eight cat allergens". Well, the one I've mentioned is the most common. Let's put it that way. They may not be correct when they say that by the way

There is also increasing cat ownership. More cats are being adopted and the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a surge in cat and dog adoptions in the UK because people were lonely. The increased adoptions are going to result in the increased number of people diagnosed with an allergy to Fel D1

AITA for giving away some of my girlfriend's rescue cats?

The man asks on Reddit.com whether he behaved badly (AITA) when he felt he was forced to rehome some rescue cats that his girlfriend had found. The title sort of indicates that he might have behaved badly but when you read the story carefully, he hasn't at all.

Reddit's AITA category for discussion.

His story

He works from home and he owns his home. His girlfriend of two years lives with him in his home. She also works from home. She does not pay rent.

She found a box of 6, 2-week-old abandoned kittens by the side of the road (that stuff happens which is appalling). She asked him whether she could bring them in to the home and he agreed even though he has a severe cat allergy. Although he asked whether she could take them to a shelter but she didn't want to do that and he relented.

Conditions he set

But he said he would allow them to come into his home on condition that she adopted them out at eight weeks of age. In the meantime, they should stay in the guest room/bathroom. And he agreed to look after them if he had to in an emergency otherwise the responsibility was his girlfriend's.

She breaks the agreement?

After four months they were still in the house and they needed fixing i.e. spaying and neutering and he did not want the expense. Also, they were now roaming around the house. His girlfriend tried to get him to clean the litter tray because she didn't feel like it, he said.

He said that his allergy to the cats was a real problem for him and that he had to constantly take precautions like wash clothes et cetera to minimise the allergic reaction.

Warned her of adopting them out

He told her three weeks before he adopted them out that he would do so. Eventually he posted them on Facebook offering them for adoption. She agreed to it.

A couple of people responded and met with him. She agreed with that as well. As a result, four of the cats were adopted out. She appears to have been out of the home at the time and when she returned, she "flipped her shit".

He was very surprised. He said that she was angry because he didn't let her say goodbye to them. He said that he gave her two months of goodbye time. He asked AITA?

Should cats be allowed on aeroplanes when 10-20% of people are allergic?

I think that this is a good question raised by Jacqueline Swartz writing for CNN. It is against the domestic cat and therefore I am a bit reluctant to write the article but, as I said, it's a good point. I think it needs discussing at least briefly.

Reluctant feline flier. Image: Reddit.com.

Jacqueline is allergic to cats. In fact, she says that she is severely allergic and vulnerable to allergic asthma. Quick research indicates that 10-20% of people are allergic to domestic cats. That is up to one in five people.

If there are a hundred people on an aircraft, 20 of them will be allergic to cats at a maximum. That's quite a big number and if there are 200 people on the plane you can double it.

Of course, not everyone is going to feel the effects of a cat in the aircraft's cabin as you have to be quite near, I would suggest, to the cat in a carrier to get the effect and therefore perhaps only one or two people allergic to cats will suffer negative consequences.

But as you probably know the feline cat allergen is carried on cat dander which disperses throughout the environment in which the cat finds themselves. I would suspect, therefore, that some cat dander travels out of the cat carrier into the cabin.

That might be a good point because it means it rests on the seats and I wonder if over time it builds up or whether the cleaners vacuum the seats or wash them down regularly.

Apparently, more people are allergic to cats than dogs because in writing this article you have got to think that if you are considering banning cats from aircraft you got to consider banning dogs from aircraft too.

One person who supports Jacqueline's argument that there should be a discussion about allowing cats on aeroplanes is an allergy and asthma specialist Dr. Mark C Jacobson, a former president of the Illinois Society of Allergy and Immunology.

He said:

"There are no hypoallergenic breeds of cat or dog.....The confined space of a plane could definitely pose a hazard for patients with cat allergy sufferers."

He confirmed that the dander is small and sticky and attaches itself to aeroplane seats.

I think it has to be admitted right away that there is no possibility of banning cats from aircraft! The only solution is for people who are allergic to cats to do something to protect themselves.

With billions of Covid-19 masks available to us, wearing one wouldn't look out of place and it could help prevent the dander from getting into the person's airways.

Apparently, air circulating throughout aircraft cabins passes through a HEPA air filter. Most airlines have them which may also help. But it probably wouldn't help if you are sitting near a cat.

Jacqueline says that on her six-hour Air Canada trip from Bogota she asked the flight attendant where the cat was located as she'd learnt that a cat was sharing the cabin with her. She was told the cat was three rows behind her! She wasn't allowed to move seats as the flight was full. And she also learned from the attendant that there were other cats and dogs on the plane.

Pets must remain in their carriers under the seat during the flight when they travel in the cabin.

Jacquelin's research informed her that economy passengers can call the airline ahead and reserve a seat five rows from the nearest cat! That might not work but there again it might.

Jeff Lane who works for United Airlines said:

"We try to be sensitive and move you away from cats. We deal with this day in and day out."

You wouldn't realise that it was such a big issue. Sometimes airlines allow eight pets in the cabin on a flight. United Airlines allow six pet cases in the cabin of Boeing 787, 777 and 767 aircraft. Four pets are allowed in the cabin of Airbus 320s and 319s.

This seems to be a pet problem (forgive the pun) of cat allergy sufferers. Tonya Winders, president of the Virginia-based Global Allergy Airways Patient Platform said: "We have been trying to raise awareness of cat allergy in cabins since 1985".

The Federal Aviation Administration's Air Carrier Access Act is meant to protect people with disabilities including severe allergies in aircraft cabins. The advice apparently is to select airlines that don't allow cat in cabins. If they do call ahead and try and sit as far as you can away from a cat and have a conversation with your doctor before flying!

Pregnant mother tells father that he can take the baby and leave if it is allergic to her cats

This is about a post on the Reddit.com website which has been picked up by The Mirror newspaper. It's an interesting little story which probably tells us more about the difficult time that a pregnant mother goes through emotionally than about the problems of cat allergies.

Pregnant mother tells father that he can take the baby and leave if it is allergic to her cats. Photo: Pixabay.

It appears that the woman is heavily pregnant and that the father of the child, to be, is predisposed to being allergic to cats which I presume he manages because they have two cats. He asked his partner (I don't know if they are married) what they should do if their child were to be allergic to cats. In response she told him that he can take "this baby you want so f****** bad and get out". He believed that she meant it but that she was worked up at the time.

The comments on the post reassured him by saying that she was probably just in a difficult emotional state because it was a time when hormones are coursing through a mother's body.

One wrote: "Dude I’m pregnant. Hormones are terrible. Our bodies are always hurting. The sound of someone breathing can tick me off.

"Some days I'm on the verge of murder (obviously in my mind) and other days I’m happy go lucky. You might’ve caught her on a bad day."

Comment: I feel compelled to comment about this. There is almost no doubt in my mind that this was just a tense moment between a couple. He chose the wrong moment to ask the question. Firstly, there's no point in talking about kicking out the father and taking the child based on the possibility that the child might be allergic to cats. It would be far better to wait to see what happens. It is very negative and destructive to talk about ejecting the father with the child that you will love because of a possibility that something might happen.

Secondly, it is possible to deal with allergies to cats. The father has a problem with allergies to cats and he has managed it. And if the allergy is fairly mild, being around cats gradually chips away at the problem. The body becomes tolerant and the problem fades to the point where it really isn't a big issue. That's my assessment. And if that doesn't work there are other ways of dealing with allergies to cats. Here are two possibles:

• Curing Your Allergy to Cats (new injection)
• Review: Purina LiveClear Allergen Reducing Sterilised Adult Turkey cat food

Thirdly, the argument does highlight the fact that sometimes domestic cats can be the centre of friction between a couple living together. It isn't over a potential allergy to cats, it might be over toxoplasmosis and pregnancy. It might simply be over the fact that one of them loves cats and the other dislikes cats. The man insists that the woman gets rid of her cats and she complies and then resents it. That's a possible outcome which is going down the wrong path.

I guess a couple with different views about domestic cats need to discuss as many aspects of domestic cat caretaking that they can before they live together! That sounds a little bit technical and formal but it may help to prevent arguments late in the day when it is much harder to find a successful solution.

Allergy to your cat versus viral infection (common cold)

These days I get itchy eyes sometimes. I have a sniffle. The symptoms are like a very low level cold. But it happens almost all the time, on and off. It is not confined to the winter or the summer or any other season for that matter. How do I know if my sniffles are due to an allergy to my cat or because I have a mild cold that my immune system is managing to deal with?

Allergy to cats versus common cold. Image: PoC.

I think it is very difficult to tell the difference between "the sniffles" (a low level viral infection which your body deals with and eliminates) and a low level allergy to your cat. The only way to find out is to remove your cat from your life for a while and see what happens. I'm not prepared to do that so I'm not going to find out!

Different cats produce different allergic responses. It depends upon the concentration of the allergen in their saliva which is called Fel d1 as you might know. Male cats who have not been neutered tend to produce more of the allergen and therefore are more likely to generate an allergic response in people predisposed to the feline allergen.

My cat is, of course, neutered but he is a male and it is conceivable that I might be is just slightly allergic to him. It's unlikely because I've not had problems with an allergy to cats, except I did once have a minor reaction to a stray cat who used to come into my home many years ago. I noticed the difference. He was not neutered.

I was also slightly allergic to a cat I adopted from my mother who had, at that time, just recently passed away. So I can be allergic to cats albeit to a very low level. I'm just wondering aloud. I am chewing the cud on this one because it is irritating to have these low level sniffles which I have to deal with using paracetamol.

I also have some antihistamine pills which I will take today.

Allergy to your cat VS cold symptoms

Apparently, there is a slight difference in the symptoms between those caused by an allergy to your cat and those caused by the presence of viral infection i.e. a cold. An allergic reaction causes itching, sneezing and a runny nose with clear drainage. A cold produces a runny nose, sore throat, body aches and sometimes a mild fever. The difference would seem to be that you can have a sore throat with a cold but you don't have a sore throat with an allergic reaction to your cat. On that basis I'm allergic to my cat!

The is also be a difference in the onset of the symptoms and their duration. Cat allergies start immediately, as soon as you are exposed to the allergen whereas colds require an incubation period. That doesn't really help me. An important difference is that common colds normally last to a maximum of about fourteen days whereas allergy symptoms can persist for months as you are constantly exposed to the allergen. That's a telling difference.

Two things that you can do now and/or in the future

Purina make a cat food which reduces the strength of the feline allergen. It is called Pro Plan LiveClear Allergen Reducing Cat Food. You might consider trying it if you are allergic to your cat. Another possible for the future (2 years?) is a single injection given to a cat which makes them hypoallergenic.

Fel d 1

Timmy - unneutered males are more prone to causing an allergic reaction.
 Photo: MikeB

Fel d 1 stands for Felis domesticus allergen 1. It is also referred to sometimes as "cat dander". Domestic cats are one of the most important sources of allergic disease in the western world with about 10% of people allergic to cats.

The allergen is in the cat's saliva (and therefore on the fur) and secreted from perianal and lachrymal glands.

The allergic reaction can be mild (e.g. itching) or life threatening (severe asthma). Cat allergens are very common and difficult to avoid. An allergen is a substance (a non-parasitic antigen) that produces an immune response. The immune response is the production of Immunoglobulin E (IgE) an antibody. Its role is unclear but the response is inappropriate and causes allergic reaction such as sneezing and asthma.

Life Style Pets Inc (Allerca cats) claim to have modified the gene responsible for the production of the allergen in the domestic cats they breed (or are bred by affiliated cat breeders) thereby eliminating the allergic reaction. They don't explain themselves however.

Some cat breeds are said to be "hypoallergenic" meaning they don't cause the same degree of allergic reaction. Claims have been made for several breeds. Generally these are unsubstantiated. Savannah cats can also be hypoallergenic. But to be honest no cat, not even the hairless cats are hypoallergenic to any substantial degree. 

For the first time I have become allergic to a cat (only slightly though). He is a stray who comes in for food and rest. When I touch him, within about a minute I itch on the hand, head, legs for example. The itching need not be where I made contact with him. In fact I only have to look at him to start itching. This is because his dander is in the room.

I wash immediately after stroking him. I even kiss him sometimes, because my tenderness towards him outweighs the inconvenience of the allergic reaction. He is unneutered and unneutered males are the most likely to have a strong dose of Fel D 1 in their saliva.

Photo of Timmy the stray cat referred to in this post. He's crashed out on my chair having eaten three or four sachets of prime cat food.

Update: Purina have made LiveClear (see above) a dry cat food that has been found to be successful in reducing their potency of the allergen. Look it up if you are allergic to cats.

From Fel d 1 to Home Page