Hi Peggy - Re your question #1 - yes absolutely, if her kittens are still nursing, then your Mamacat is still producing milk - I've several times spayed the Mama while the kittens were still nursing, and it appeared not to affect the milk supply at all. You'd think that the nursing or at least the kitten-paws-kneading would HURT, but none of the mamacats have even blinked at it, and the kittens have all gone on to nurse their usual time-span. About your question #2 - whether it might help or hurt the kittens to continue to nurse, when Mama and kittens have all tested positive to FeLV - that is a good question, and I wish Preston Truman would weigh in here. The kittens' positive result might be a false-positive because of Mama's antibodies - did you do an IFA on them also? In which case, if they're really negative, you wouldn't want them to be exposed to a single more virus, and if the Mamacat has virus in her bloodstream then she has virus in her milk - but she's been on interferon, so it's perfectly possible that she doesn't have any significant amount of free virus right now. But if the kittens really are positive themselves already, it's a question of whether more virus in the milk (if it IS there, which we don't know) would affect the process of becoming immune, and I don't think anyone has studied that question. You can argue it either way. Getting a sufficient immune response so that the virus is wiped out, at least where it is susceptible to attack, is a balancing matter - enough more response than invading virus, and you get immune control. There might be - probably would be - still virus tucked away inside cells - that's what a retrovirus does - but it wouldn't be *active*. On the other hand, there's going to be anti-FeLV antibodies and other immune-system products in her milk and although they're too old now for any significant part of the antibodies to be getting through the gut wall, the milk with its antibodies and immune factors will be bathing their mouths and throats and could be stimulating the immune process there. And, also, milk is better for baby kitties than kitten food - just like human babies, if they're breast-fed they grow up with better immune systems. But, as old as your kits are, they would do fine - nutritionally speaking - on kitten food. Unless you want to go to the trouble of re-testing mama to see if she's got any virus in her blood currently - whichever test that would be, to look specifically for viral RNA - and that is probably not a vet-standard test - probably, if it were me, I'd take them off Mama. You only have to keep them apart for 3 or 4 days or so to get her to dry up. And about the occasional detachedness - I've seen that in every nursing Mamacat - they do have serious instincts that makes them take care of their kittens, but I don't think they always like it very much. Lots of them try to get away - perch on a high spot out of reach and just ignore the babies until they just have to come down and be nursed on. Mary
