How will my cat’s allergies be diagnosed?

A lot of the diagnosis comes from information that the kitty apparent can provide to me. Let me know if this problem has been a recurring problem? Has this been about the same time each year? We're trying to get a better sense of if this is a problem that's year over year or if it is a brand new problem? But again, we're trying to get a better sense of the problem's origin. Once we have the kitty on the table, we're going to take a look and see what kind of hair loss, sores, lesions, scabs, or whatever is going on with this cat's skin to give me a better sense of what the origin is. If I see problems primarily around the head, neck, and face, I'm always going to think of food allergies first. If I see a cat with not necessarily hair loss but a lot of scabbing from the neck, in the back end, or above the tail, we're always going to think of either seasonal allergies or a flea allergy. Then we like to look at the belly of the cat. A lot of times, people never look at their cat's belly because unless their cat happens to be laying on a sofa and you want to give a little belly rubbing, some cats like it, some cats don't. But when you happen to look at the belly, they may be ripping. We've seen cats with horrendous areas on their belly where they're red and raw, and they've ripped out all the hair. All of that will be information for me to better understand what's likely causing the problem in the first place.

We're going to look at the skin, do a full physical exam, and just give them a good one once over. We're going to do some skin scraping, some skin cytology, and just look and see if there's anything that we see abnormal besides allergens.