Marnie,
It is common for this to happen. I trapped 5 plus mom, mom was
snap negative, runt was positive, 4 others were negative. 6 weeks
later one of the negatives got a fever, was retested, and was
positive. We think the first test was done too soon after his last
exposure, there was not enough antigen yet in his body for the test to
detect. Some vets will wrongly try to tell you that they will all
eventually test positive. This is definitely not true. Three of our
negative littermates are now 4.5 years old and still negative.
As far as why this happens, there are a few different theories,
but no one knows for sure. One that I have heard is that they could
be infected by a nanny cat. In our case we only did the Elisa on the
momma, then spayed and released her. Had we done an IFA, she may have
showed positive. Following is a link to a chart which shows what
testing path to follow based on the results that you are getting.
http://www.felineleukemia.org/felvhlth.html
Best wishes,
Beth
On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 12:52 AM, Marnie <marni...@embarqmail.com> wrote:
> My shelter just took in a litter of 5 kittens. They are about 8 weeks old.
> The 3 females tested possible for feline leukemia with the Idexx snap test
> and the 2 males were negative. We retested from another batch of tests and
> the same thing. How is this possible if they are all from the same mother?
> Can anyone shed some light on this please?
> Marnie
>
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