I guess we have to wait till more proof comes in on the vaccine. We have decided to go with a 4-yr-old FELV+ male who, I think, has a better chance at living for longer than a year. A common belief seems to be that kittens and younger ones will only live 2-3 years. Hopefully he contracted it as an adult, & can fend off the disease for a longer time.
_____ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of TenHouseCats Sent: Tuesday, December 26, 2006 3:11 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Seeking a pal for L'il Abner i just think that if there were any cases where a cat was KNOWN to be negative, from both snap and IFA tests, and then became positive from living with a positive, we would have heard about it by now. i know that i definitely went into this whole thing believing in the only-85%-efficacy rate of the vaccine, and would never have considered mixing positives and negatives. i think i was LOOKING for documented proof, actually, and have been surprised that after all these years no one's been able to point out a case to me. but i agree that it's everyone's individual choice. if i could afford to vaccinate everyone, and had the room, i would probably be willing to have a FeLV with my others, but i am decidedly NOT brave enough to do what many others have chosen to do, which is to have unvaccinated negatives with definite positives. there's just not enough research out there in terms of what other predisposing factors might make a cat more susceptible to retaining the virus... it really does get confusing, doesn't it? back when brownee had just died from leukemia and we were waiting to retest all the rest of the cats in the house, i was just about to take in a kitty with paralyzed rear legs. i of course immediately called the woman who had him, to tell her i couldn't take him because of the possibility of there being FeLV in the house. she was a vet, and she told me i had nothing to worry about, that she'd give pee-wee his full series of shots before she brought him to me and i'd have nothing to worry about even if others in the house had it.... i still thought you could get FeLV by having an outdoor cat breathe through a screen door at one of the house cats, so this was absolute heresy to me at the time.... you have to wonder--she was fairly young, and a professor at the local vet school so still tuned into current research and developments--how much newer information is out there that just doesn't make it to our neighborhood vets' offices? how come someone on this list can spend an afternoon and come up with figures on the reliability of snap tests, but vets and shelters don't seem to know the statistics? sigh. On 12/26/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: ok, so it may be hard to definitively prove that a negative cat, after being vaccinated, became positive. But it can't be proved they haven't, either, so if someone wants to be safe and not mix I would not discourage that. I don't criticize anyone for mixing who does, but I also don't think anyone should be trying to convince someone who is hesitant that there is no way the negative can turn positive from exposure. You just don't know that, and there are some cases that indicate, potentially if not definitively, that they can. Michelle In a message dated 12/26/2006 2:46:08 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ah, but the issue is, "truly negative"--not only are snap tests not that reliable even when done correctly (which isn't always the case at shelters), but unless one knows for sure that any given cat couldn't possibly have been in contact with a positive cat for at least 90 days before a test, you can't really know that a negative test is accurate anyway. that's why retesting is so vital. shelters around here, until recently, only used the old-style saliva tests, which are incredibly unreliable--we brought an absolute sweetheart of a tortie into the house from there, and tho she'd tested negative (and had 4 supposedly healthy kittens, and nursed another 4 orphans), she ended up being diagnosed positive when she became very ill at about 18 months, and went to the bridge soon afterwards. in the household with her had been two kittens who'd only been about 3-months-old when they joined the household, as well as a couple of quite elderly cats--both high-risk populations, and none of the others in the household ever tested positive, luckily! (the 3-month-olds are now going on seven....) the need for retesting was just not clearly enough understood, nor was the great variability in accuracy in snap tests (i think susan h found research showing a range of errors from 20-80%!). i know of two sanctuaries that never retested their "positives," who have since begun doing so, and have discovered that a fair number of their older cats who have lived exclusively with FeLVs, often those with active disease, and who have had their own bouts of serious illnesses thought to be FeLV-related, who actually were found to be negative on the IFA, even after years of constant exposure.... -- Spay & Neuter Your Neighbors! Maybe That'll Make The Difference.... MaryChristine AIM / YAHOO: TenHouseCats MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ: 289856892
