Barbara,
If Tom has already been with your other cats IF there is to be any damage done it's probably already done. My first positive cat lived with 12 others about 6 months before I knew she was positive. At that time I didn't bother to separate. She lived about 7 years and wasn't separated even when she became sick and I lost her. In the meantime I brought in a new positive who is now about 6 years old. None of my negatives have ever tested positive after living with the 2 negatives. Over the years I have lost several of my negatives due to various illnesses, and even though they were sick they still never contracted the felv. In fact I have an older negative cat who is losing weight and we're trying to find what's wrong with him right now. I had him retested (just in case) with an IFA last week, and he's still negative.
Also, unless your 4 negative cats have never been exposed to any unknown cats and you know the status of their parents, they could be harboring the virus anyway and you just don't know it yet. Sometimes people have cats turn up positive late in life when they have never left the house, etc.
If you want to keep Tom I feel your other cats are safe from exposure to him if they haven't contracted it yet, and as long as they are vaccinated.
tonya
Barbara Baass <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Barbara Baass <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Tad,You just don't know how all that has put my mind at ease. I have been so worried about Tom that I was unable to sleep at night. I was going on only what my vet told me until I got on this site a couple days ago. I have heard so many positive things about felve cats. He is such a great cat that he is really something.Thank you again.
Tad Burnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Much of the time kittend arn't tested until they become sick and normal antibiotics don't work as expected...At this point the death rate is high...but many cats are positive but becouse they arn't tested they don't get put into the statistics...Thus keeping an FeLV+ cat really isn't as bad as vets often say...
If a cat is kept healthy and low stress their own imune systems will keep them out of trouble...This is true for both POS and NEG cats...
My vet explained that ethicaly he is required to tell me that keeping an FeLV+ is not safe for the rest of my cats...but neather is eating and breathing....
He told me that he has seen several FeLV+ that have come in sick and then tested ...They have been living with other cats but he doesn't recal a case where other cats from the same group got sick...
It seems to be stray cats that live a bad life for a period of time that are contacting the disease...
>From my own observations..the average age may be 3 years but I think that if a cat is healthy and made it past 1 year he is in the group that lives for many more years...Many die between 6 months and 1 year which brings the average age way down but once he has made it past that window I think you have to look at a differant set of numbers....
I have now lost 4 under a year and I have one old girl that was in terable shape (a declawed stray) when I got her but with good food and fea meds and a couple years time she is doing well..My vet thinks she is over 12 years old....
Tad
Belinda Sauro wrote:
Barbara,No virus found in this outgoing message.
Did you see my post about my typo, Bailey is 10, not 20. But he has been positive since atleast 5 months of age when I found him, at the time I wasin Missouri and took him to three different vet, all 3 said "You might as well euthanize him, he will be dead in three months. I had some experience with FeLV and already knew this wasn't true, but can you imagine how many healthy cats die because people take thier vets word as absolute and blindly do as they are advised??
Any cat that is positive and asymptomatic for as long as Bailey is classified as a carrier and the virus is most likely in the bone marrow. I don't fool myself I know sat anytime he could become symptomatic and get sick. One of the most important things is keeping the stress down, stress is a well known trigger of setting the virus off.
Another thing and I can't speak about your vet, but it ahs been my experience the vets that have been practicing for a longer time are less experienced in the virus because they do not go to continuing education conferences to learn the newest updates about all diseases. My now vet is very young and has been practicing for only about 6 or 7 years. About 3 times a year she goes for a week or so at a time to conferences about the newest findings on many different diseases and she also goes to conferences to learn new treatment options. She is learning acupunture and holistic medicine as well as traditional medicine. She will someday be a very well rounded vet, and on top of all that to help keep my kitties stress down, she comes to the house for anything that doesn't absolutely need to be done at the office on her day off!! They get their vaccines at home and blood draws for blood tests at home. And yes if I find something on the internet I think has merit I tell her about and she will research it for me. She allows me to bring them in right before any procedures instead of dropping them off in the morning and leaving them there all day, this is very stressful for cats especially. And I wait and take them home as soon after the procedure as it is safe. She is a gem and if she ever moves, I'll have to pull up stakes and follow her :))
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