Appreciate everyone's good wishes for all the rest of the cats in this situation to remain negative. Yes, like Karolyn's friend's kitty, Lexus was tested only once - as a four-month-old kitten, and at that time the virus obviously wasn't in her bloodstream yet so the test could only show negative. We understand that part - I've preached to all my adopters and everyone else I ever met in the past 11 years that you should test and then retest after 90 days, but the thing that is strange in Theresa's cats situation is that the other 14 are all negative. All of them have been exposed to Lexus for three years, and none of them had any shots in that time period or even before that. The only ones who weren't already in the group before Lexus are a one year old mama cat and her two six month old sons. They haven't had any shots ever, but they have lived with Lexus from the time the two kittens were just a few weeks old (some of the other cats did have shots several years ago). ! It is particularly interesting that despite ongoing exposure from a very young age, when they would be most vulnerable, these kittens do not appear to have contracted leukemia. Or, like someone else said, they and perhaps some of the others have contracted it and already thrown it off - but it would surely be unprecedented for all of them to have had it and thrown it off. Some could be immune, of course - some do just have stronger immune systems and can resist infection in the first place. But I think the probably explanation of why Lexus hasn't passed the virus on is that she probably has one of the less virulent strains. We dealt with another large household of cats a few years ago, involving 44 cats altogether, including several litters of tiny kittens. Only two cats were positive. Some of the kittens and moms were exposed to the positives, but after testing and retesting, all the remaining cats were negative. One of the positive cats is still symptom free 4-1/2 ! years later; one died of heartworm disease, but a necropsy showed no sign of symptoms from his leukemia. Again, I think these kitties probably had one of the milder strains of the virus. The person who was going to adopt Lexus is adopting one of my healthy cats (to help make room for some of Theresa's). We are going to try to find some homes without other cats for the cats who were exposed to Lexus, but I don't suppose we shall be lucky enough to find enough people for all of them, so we are trying to figure out a way to keep the rest for the 90 days until they can be retested.
