One thing on transmission== a vet once told me... Both viruses have been around since the time of the dinosaurs==if they were that easily transmitted, we would have no cats left! I think that the trouble is that vets generally see kittens who succumb because they are young and can't fight off infection. I doubt that most vets test an older cat who shows signs of one of the FELV related conditions--cancer, gum infection, etc. And then there are the older cats who don't ever go to a vet and just live their regular lives. I've not found any random studies that test a large population of domestic and ferals and then just watch over a period of time.
Chris ti...@mindspring.com -----Original Message----- From: felvtalk-boun...@felineleukemia.org [mailto:felvtalk-boun...@felineleukemia.org] On Behalf Of Rosenfeldt, Diane Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 2:12 PM To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] PCR test reliability Stef -- Sorry you're having all this trouble and worry right now. About FIV, you are right and your vet is wrong. It is VERY hard to transmit other than through fighting (deep bites) and sex. It's much less "contagious" than FeLV, and even FeLV appears to be not as contagious as originally thought. I'm on a feral cat list where there has been some discussion of FeLV, and people have said they've seen cat colonies where they know that some cats are FeLV+, and if it's as transmissible as we're supposed to believe, the whole colonies should have gotten sick and died, and they just haven't. The trouble is that for some reason some vets don't keep up with new research as much as they should, and keep giving wrong information, and more importantly, don't know the right things to do to keep the cats as healthy as possible or to treat them properly when they do get sick. Your cats are very cute! Diane R. -----Original Message----- From: felvtalk-boun...@felineleukemia.org [mailto:felvtalk-boun...@felineleukemia.org] On Behalf Of Stefania Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 12:34 PM To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] PCR test reliability Hi Chris, thank-you very much for sharing your story. The problem here is that in these days I read very much on FeLV and FIV and I agree with you. My cats have always been together (except for Trudi, who is a lone wolf), they play, groom each other and they eat together even if they have one bowl each :-) They go out and I live in the country, so there are surely many stray cats and many owners who don't bother to test their cats! What am I supposed to do? I don't want to keep them inside because it's like a prison for them. On friday I will test the last two of them and I strongly hope they're negative, so I will continue to vaccine them and hope. My vet scared me a lot saying that FIV is very transmissible and the virus is strong and cats can catch it by grooming each other. Since I knew that it's not so, I tried to ask once again to this vet, but she keeps on saying that FIV spreads very well. I'm really surprised to hear so... I so decided to take Trudi to another vet and she immediately recognized stomatitis in her mouth (which the first one denied) and nose. She simply gave me a gel for her mouth. About the dermatitis: it can be for amoxicillin but we don't know. We decided to use, first, something against fleas and then wait and see. If the situation does not change, we will try with a local gel. Has anyone had experience with dermatitis? For Trudi it's the first time, and that's why I think it was the amoxicillin. If you want to see picture of my 4 babies, I have a blog. It's written in "cattish" so you cannot understand, but you can see pictures. It's www.trumiro.com Hi all! Stef Passa a Yahoo! Mail. La webmail che ti offre GRATIS spazio illimitato, antispam e messenger integrato. http://it.mail.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org This electronic mail transmission and any attachments are confidential and may be privileged. They should be read or retained only by the intended recipient. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the transmission from your system. In addition, in order to comply with Treasury Circular 230, we are required to inform you that unless we have specifically stated to the contrary in writing, any advice we provide in this email or any attachment concerning federal tax issues or submissions is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, to avoid federal tax penalties. _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
