I'm with Brenda. My Patches wasn't a typical scenario. He was a stray who found us in the middle of the night -- I happened to wake up and hear him demanding attention outside the window. We enticed him in and "isolated" him in the back hall, giving him food and water. We have a screen door in the back hall whose purpose has been to keep the cats from wandering into the basement, but just for that night we figured it would keep Patches separate from the others until we could tend to de-fleaing, de-matting (he had the nastiest mats) and vetting. Four hours later I awoke to a conversation between Patches and Tribble, taking place in the front porch room, the full length of the house away from where we had "safely" left Patches. So he had had 4 hours to mingle with the others, eat their food, etc. When we took him to the vet 3 days later -- long holiday weekend -- and found out he was positive, we were worried for the others and were considering whether to have the others vaccinated or what. We didn't, and nobody has gotten sick in the several years since then. We did isolate Patches, after the fact, and I'm very sorry now that we did. After the mats came off -- they must have hurt him dreadfully -- he was such a lovey guy and really wanted to be with the rest of us. I really hope that that wasn't what kicked his FeLV into action -- his lymph nodes swelled and he wouldn't eat, and he was only with us a couple of months. I guess he was just meant to come to us so he would have care and love at the end, but it's still hard when you let them into your life and then they leave.
Diane R. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Belinda Sauro Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 12:44 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] How to long to separate negative/positive kitties? Almost all of the info you are going to find online is outdated. My vet told me the vaccination is 85 to 90% effective and that an adult cat has little chance of getting infected, even if not vaccinated. All I can say is Bailey lived with as many as 8 house mates and not one of them ever became FeLV +. He and Joey were best buds and they would groom, even touching tongue to tongue and I had Joey PRC (DNA test) tested to make sure and he was negative. Bailey lived with his house mates for 11 years so I feel pretty comfortable mixing. If I were to have another positive I wouldn't be worried about mixing as long as they weren't viciously hostile to each other. -- Belinda happiness is being owned by cats ... http://bemikitties.com http://BelindaSauro.com _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list [email protected] http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list [email protected] http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
