Hi Beth, I'm glad you found us too. Thank you so much for not being
able to turn away from these cats! Please, please, please, stop
beating yourself up for doing the best you could in a not so good
situation. As Lance said, I highly doubt that you have put Blue in any
danger. There are many misconceptions about felv, but one thing that
most vets agree on is that there has to be prolonged physical contact
to catch it. "When it dries, it dies", and it can't be contracted by
simply being in the same environment, in other words, it isn't an
airborne transmission. Many folks on the list mix negs and pos and it
is very rare for a healthy adult neg cat to contract the disease, esp
if they have been vaccinated. There are varying opinions on this, but
if it were me, and your cat hasn't already been vaccinated, I'd test
her and if she's neg, I'd get her vaccinated. My introduction to felv
came when I rescued a litter of bottle babies. I didn't know they were
pos at the time and they mixed with all my other cats. I had taken in
a feral kitten and they accepted her and treated her like a litter
mate. They ate, slept, groomed, played together, they shared litter
boxes and food dishes. My little feral girl, Gypsy, never got felv and
she was young and not vaccinated for it!
False pos on kittens are common. I'm glad you've gotten the IFA test
done. Please don't call yourself an idiot. Your a caring, loving
person, just trying to do the right thing by these little angels. If
Mom tested neg, I would release her back to her territory, are the
kittens old enough to do okay without her? How is Alice doing? I hope
she's feeling better. Give those babies a head bump from me. Hugs to
you and your husband, it sounds like you have a good man there.
Oh man, how I understand the financial problems and how hard it is to
find the money to help these guys. My best wishes and prayers are with
you, where there is a will, there is a way. Sending support and
concern,
Nina
Gary Murphy wrote:
Hi everyone,
Happy to have found this list, but I so wish I didn't need to.
Here's my story...
A feral cat had 5 kittens in my in laws brush pile, she moved
them after I found them at 3 weeks old. I waited a few weeks and went
looking for them again, figuring they could be weaned but were still
small enough to catch. After a lot of work moving the wrong neighbor's
huge, gigantic brush pile, I found them in the next yard over in a
little, tiny brush pile in the woods. Called my husband to bring the
cat carrier and we caught 3 relatively easily. The other two ducked
into a rabbit? or woodchuck? hole, too deep to see them, and wouldn't
come out. We set the live trap, caught the mom and one very sick
little runt (Alice), then reset the trap. It took 2 more days to catch
the last bugger, Dash. We put everyone but the sick one in a dog crate
in a shady spot at my in laws, took the runt in to the vet, got her
wormed, eye drops, antibiotics. She was only 14 oz, less than 1/2 the
weight she should have been, and too sick and little to do a blood draw
on. We made an appointment to have the Elisa test done in a week, and
kept her in a crate in my in laws spare room. My mother-in-law hates
cats, she is elderly and set in her ways, it was causing a lot of
stress in the family, then we got three 94 degree days in a row and she
wouldn't let me bring them in her house, so we brought the crate to my
back yard (mistake #1) and set it up with a fan blowing on one
side until her appointment to get spayed (the humane society clinic had
a 10 day backlog for this). She had the surgery Wednesday, Elisa was
negative, it was still stinking hot, so I brought her crate inside of
our house (mistake #2), sequestered in a spare bedroom away from our
resident FeLV neg. furbaby, Blue. I figured if mom was neg.,
the kittens were probably negative (mistake #3), so I put them in a
borrowed crate in our bedroom, but soon felt sorry for them and let
them out to run around and play. Couldn't afford to take them in to
the vet as well, figured we'd find homes for them and ask the adopters
for a deposit to help get them started on vet care. They are twice the
size of the runt, few sneezes once in a while, but no discharge and
they run around like crazy. I washed up and disinfected after caring
for any cat and kept everyone separate, except for letting my cat peek
in the kitten's door once (nobody came near her, she stayed outside and
watched, but what an idiot I am.) Alice the runt was still at my
in-law's, we decided to keep her, took her to vet on Friday, gained
8oz. in a week, got her first vaccination while we waited for the test
results. They were very busy, but she was so darling that the vet
didn't want to leave her. Then we got her very positive results. I
sobbed, the vet tech and receptionist were crying. I should get her
IFA results back in a few days, but don't have much hope. The others
get tested tomorrow, not sure what we will do, a rescue might find
homes for 1 or 2, but what if all 5 are positive? If I didn't already
have a cat I would keep some, but I'm hyper-ventilating just thinking
about the danger I've put her in already. In the mean time, we've
spent close to $700.00 on this whole thing so far, I haven't made the
house payment yet and our only car with less than 100,000 miles on it
blew it's engine the night before we got the bad news on Alice. Mom
cat hates my guts, can't be touched, her only hope to live is to be
re-released as a feral, is it ethical to do this with just the negative
Elisa? I can't afford to keep testing everyone, have to get them out
of my house and away from my cat, any advice would be greatly
appreciated.
Thank you, Beth
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