Cindy, You said: I took in a cat back in November (Smokey) before I brought him into the household I took him to the vet and had him checked and tested for felv. The test showed negative. I brought him home and let him be around some of my other cats. All of my other cats had been vaccinated every year.
You might reconsider the annual FELV vaccines if you read up on all the risks involved, and the facts on adult immunity against FELV. http://www.vin.com/VINDBPub/SearchPB/Proceedings/PR05000/PR00109.htm http://www.vin.com/proceedings/Proceedings.plx?CID=WSAVA2004&PID=8708&O=Generic http://www.vin.com/proceedings/Proceedings.plx?CID=WSAVA2002&PID=2615 http://www.vmth.ucdavis.edu/vmth/clientinfo/info/genmed/vaccinproto.html http://www.fenixresearch.com/vet/vasavmar.shtml http://www.vas-awareness.org/References.htm http://www.avma.org/vafstf/default.asp http://www.dvmnewsmagazine.com/dvm/data/articlestandard/dvm/482003/77544/article.pdf http://www.vetinfo.com/cvaccprob.html http://www.vetinfo.com/cfeleuk.html http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/sep04/040915k.asp http://www.tahealth.net/vas.html http://www.feline-vas-support.org/ http://www.avma.org/vafstf/treatcoutomacy.asp And just what, exactly is IN a vaccine anyways? Pretty scary if you do a little research! (yeah, not JUST your PET vaccines, this stuff is in the vaccines your pediatrician shoots into your CHILDREN): http://www.whale.to/vaccine/adjuvants.html http://www.vaccination.inoz.com/ingredie.html And this is a post Nina posted a while back, from a vet: Hello Everyone, I've been discussing resistance ratios of healthy adult cats to Felv with the vet that monitors my IBD list. She just sent this to me this morning and knew you guys would be interested. Nina Lisa...this is a question that comes up quite frequently. The natural resistance to FeLV infection in cats older than 4 to 6 months is very well established among feline retrovirologist. While susceptibility to FIV remains constant throughout life, that simply is not the case with FeLV. While it is NOT impossible to infect an adult cat, the inoculate of FeLV has to be really significant (or repeated) in order to infect. This has been shown in virtually all FeLV vaccine Challenge studies involving adult cats. It is MOST difficult to assess efficacy of an FeLV vaccine when using adults as controls...because they just don't get infected. Schering Plough has turned this into a "3-year guarantee" for their FeLV vaccine (a VERY reactive adjuvanted vaccine). This is a 'no-brainer'...obviously! Fact is, ALL FeLV vaccines look good in the long run because of this natural resistance. This phenomenon is apparently related to T-cell maturity in the individual cat and the interaction of those lymphocytes with specific epitopes of FeLV. The updated Feline Vaccination Guidelines are being written now. This material will be included to more clearly point out this phenomenon. I do have a copy of the original paper...it goes back a number of years now and was published in a virology journal...Richard Olsen (who developed the first FeLV vaccine for Norden Laboratories) and Jennifer Royjko (sp?) published the manuscript. I don't have that paper with me...but will try to dig this out and send the ref if you're really interested in getting into that. RBFord Here's more to back that up: http://www.caberfeidh.com/FelineTiters.htm http://www.netcat.org/symposium/vaccinology.html http://www.cathealth.com/FeLV.htm (just do a google search on FELV natural adult immunity, or FELV titers, or adult resistance FELV, you'll get hundreds of sites that say FELV resistance is high in adult cats naturally) Jenn http://ucat.us http://ucat.us/domesticcatlinks.html Adopt a cat from Little Cheetah (UCAT) Cat Rescue: http://ucat.us/adopt.html PLEASE DONATE TO THE TANGLE FUND: Tangle is a cat in Greece that was severely injured when someone wrapped wire around his neck to strangle him, Little Cheetah Cat Rescue is raising funds to bring Tangle to Vermont to find him a good home! http://ucat.us/tangle-fund.html DONATE: We could really use a power saw (for construction), a digital camera (for pictures), and more towels! -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.6/323 - Release Date: 4/24/2006
