[Felvtalk] FELV contagious

Maya D'Alessio mdelow at gmail.com
Mon Aug 11 16:24:51 CDT 2014


So, my one cat Merlot is clearly lonely.  He is used to being second in
command to our cat Yang who passed away.

I work with a cat rescue, and the cats there all live communally until they
are adopted (with a quarantine area for cats on meds/who are really sick).
 She thinks that there isn't much of a problem with bringing another cat in
to the house, as long as the other cat is not immune compromised, etc.
 This contrasts with what my vet says - no other cat contact.

I'm not sure who to believe here.  Obviously FELV is contagious, and it is
passed from cat to cat.  The chance of that increases with increased
contact, but the lady made it seem that for the 20 years she's been running
the place she has only had a handful of FELV+ cats, none of them died from
it, and she had a 19 year old cat who had lived with all of them test
negative for FELV recently.  I can't imagine being responsible for exposing
another cat to the virus and getting them sick, but I also feel bad for
Merlot who is lonely.  I was thining maybe I would consider (in six months
or so), trying to take in a cat who was not going to find another home.
 ie. an older cat, or a cat from a society that they were about to put down.

What do you guys think / what has your vet said to you about this?

-- 
Maya D'Alessio
PhD student
B1 377B, x32320
Graduate Student Endowment Fund Coordinator
Biology GSA Vice Chair
GSA Director At-Large
University of Waterloo
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