Sally,
It is impossible to know. My friend Yuki called me yesterday to tell me
that her cat Tiko, age 13 and negative, died while she was away for 3 days.
Her mom had been feeding him and said he was fine, then could not find him the
last day. Yuki came home and found him dead. She has no idea what happened.
She did not know he was sick. Her cat Sinbad, who had distemper as a kitten
and has severe neurological and other problems, is now 15 and the last of her
cats left. We always assumed he would be the first to go, not the last. My
dog Fern was the only one of our 3 dogs who had any health problems that we
knew of, and she had a lot of them, and she outlived the other two. It seems
to happen that way a lot. I think that is why people say things like "Man
makes plans and God laughs." We think we know what is going to happen, but we
don't. Tiny may have died from something totally unrelated to FeLV, like a
heart problem. My dog Chip seemed healthier than healthy, had just run 4
miles
with me two days earlier and was out running around on a walk, and suddenly
collapsed, cried out, and was dead. She must have had a latent heart
condition. She literally looked and acted like an athlete, and was only 9
years old.
we will never know what happened to her.
We do the best we can to figure things out while they are happening, and
sometimes we can and sometimes we can't. I am very bad at accepting this, but
am trying to learn to, because it is the way things are.
Michelle
