Hi to all of you - my name is Cindy and I volunteer for a "no-kill" cat shelter in East Texas. We have many cats and kittens at the shelter- and have taken in over 45 kittens during this kitten season. Most have been dumped outside our gate and some have been brought in by Animal Control.
Before being adopted, our cats & kittens are spayed or neutered, vaccinated, tested for Felv & FIV, micro-chipped, treated for fleas, ear mites, etc. We have, like most shelters, very little money and fewer volunteers. After putting down a wonderful cat a couple of years ago who tested positive for FelV (2 different tests) - we decided to never put down a positive who was symptom free again. It broke our hearts to do it and seemed so unnecessary - regardless of what the vet said. We now have three FelV positive and one FIV positive adult cats who are free to live
out their lives with as much comfort as we can provide.
Unfortunately, last week one litter of 10 - 12 week old kittens went in to be spayed / neutered and they tested positive for FelV. These 5 kittens were dumped at our shelter when they were about 4 weeks old. They are so wonderful & just full of personality.
Has anyone had any experience with FelV in kittens? Of course we will retest them in a few weeks - the vet has said that they may just have antibodies from their mom and will not necessarily develop FelV. If they do develop it at such a young age, what can we expect? What is life expectancy? We have caught some grief from a couple of people who said we absolutely should have them put down - that we just have so many more to take care of. I know that there are no guarantees - just looking for info. from anyone who has experienced this.
Sorry this is long. I very much appreciate your input and feel I have already gained a lot of information from this list.
Thanks for your time,
Cindy
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