belinda, have you ever seen any research about a VACCINATED negative ever turning positive from living with a positive? i have not--and the experiences of folks on this list as well as friends with positives and vaccinated negatives seems to bear this out....
i've come to think that, when they say the vaccine is only 85% effective, they're not talking about the whole cat population, but only the highly compromised parts--the very young and very old who are most at risk to start with. otherwise, how could 70% of unvaccinated, adult cats manage to throw the virus off consistently?
friend is a BIG black cat at the sanctuary, who lived for years in the FeLV compound. he'd been a feral, and obviously tested positive before he came into our care. four years or so ago, he became very ill, to the daily fluids and force-feeding level. he pulled through that, and tho he's had a couple of bouts of other major uris and things, he's been very healthy for the last year and a half or so. for some reason, about a year ago, he was retested--something that isn't regularly done with the FeLVs..... guess what--this little brat, who's been quite sickly at least 3 times that i know of, and who has been living exclusively with FeLVs, is NEGATIVE on the ifa.... he's now a huge, spoiled-rotten housecat, and his story really makes me wonder about how contagious this virus is, whether or not initial exposure immunizes them against subsequent--and in his case, constant--exposure, and such-like issues....
On 7/12/06, Belinda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
As you said no test is 100% accurate, the IFA is the better test. The hard part, is your almost certainly not going to know when a cat was exposed so the accuracy of the test is always going to be questionable. A cat that tests positive may still be in the stage of trying to fight the virus off and may very well test negative at a later date. The way I look at it is that a healthy, vaccinated negative cat is very unlikely to get the virus from a positive, and if they did their own healthy immune system would most likely successfully fight it off. Not to say it couldn't happen, but I personally believe the chances are almost zero.-- Belinda happiness is being owned by cats ...Be-Mi-Kitties http://bemikitties.com Post Adoptable FeLV/FIV/FIP Cats/Kittens http://adopt.bemikitties.com FeLV Candlelight Service http://bemikitties.com/cls HostDesign4U.com [affordable hosting & web design] http://HostDesign4U.com ------------ BMK Designs [non-profit animals websites] http://bmk.bemikitties.com
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