In a message dated 7/3/2001 2:43:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << I guess keeping stress to a minimium is extremely important, although I'm not sure how you can remove all stress. Does anyone have thoughts on this? If we leave him with a petsitter to go on vacation, will it be too much stress? Would moving be too much stress? Would adding another cat be too much stress? >> My positve cat lives in a room of her own with no other cats because my 6 other cats are negative. I spend a minimum of 2 1/2 hours a day one-on-one time with her and more than that on the week-ends. She has tons of toys, a window perch so she can look outside and I consider her fairly stress free. We are NOT going on vacation this year because she is leery of strangers and I'm afraid it would stress her too much to have someone coming in to care for her. I had a positive stray a couple of years ago who lived in our basement and did fine for a year until we went on vacation. A tech from the vet's office who was familiar with the cat came in to feed him each day and when we got home he was very ill and had to be put down. It was heartbreaking and I can't take that chance with Polkadots. When she was spayed, I took her stitches out at home to avoid the stress of going back to the vet. In otherwords, I do everything in my power to keep her stress free. She is 8 months old, was a stray that was born in a parking lot, and was diagnosed at 12 weeks (ELISA) and tested positive on IFA 3 months later. I guess we just all do the best we can with these precious babies. Jo
