With respect to the general practice of euthanizing FELV+ cats in shelters, having fostered many cats from a big city shelter that of course was underfunded and understaffed, I can say that in my city it is impossible to find foster homes, never mind adoptive homes, for all that test positive.
Very young kittens cannot be tested reliably and of course, the need for foster homes for the littlest babies is great. When fosterers finally test those kittens and find out that one or more is positive, there are really only a couple of options. That home can keep the kitten sequestered if possible for retesting when older or take it back to be euthanized. Then what happens if the kitten retests positive? Or what about the older cat that is infected shortly before it gets into the shelter and tests negative when going to a foster home but if actually carrying the virus? In my case, I ended up with 3 positive one year olds along with my adult cats who are vaccinated. I have decided to no longer foster any other cats because, outside of the logistics of separating which would be too hard in my situation, I don't want to introduce a new stressor in the house that might trigger the FELV to become active in these positive ones. My answer is to care for these positives for the rest of their lives. However, I fostered and found adoptive homes for > 100 kittens and cats in the last two years but now, because I am hospicing these 3 cats, it is fair to say that a good number of cats will die in the next two years as the kill rate is significant here. It is a really painful fact that I could save the lives of many more than three cats if I put these FELV+ cats down. Therefore, because healthy happy well adjusted wonderful pet cats are put down every single day of the year in my city and probably most other big cities, I think that a policy of euthanizing cats that test positive for an incurable illness before euthanizing healthy adoptable cats makes sense. _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list [email protected] http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
