What affects us affects cats
As a concerned cat owner, have you heard of feline foamy virus (FFV or FeFV)? It is not listed in the excellent Cat Owner’s Home Veterinary Handbook and yet the AVMA in their online journal recently say that it is present in a high proportion of domestic cats. For example 64% of domestic cats …
This advice by the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) applies to any country. Dr Michael Lappin the chairman of the association has encouraged all cat owners to keep their companion animals indoors for the time being. This is interesting advice because no one, not a single person, in the UK is listening to …
Dr. Diane Delmain of Auburn University’s College of Veterinary Medicine explains the basic differences in an interview by WLTZ First News between FeLV and FIV. FeLV stands for ‘feline leukemia virus’ while FIV stands for ‘feline immunodeficiency virus’. I shortened the interview deliberately for technical reasons. You can see the full interview if you …
Full-time indoor cats can get colds because the virus that produces the cold can get inside the house where the cat lives in various ways one of which is on the cat owner’s hands.
Hundreds of kittens and cats that have passed through the Central California SPCA (some to PetSmart) are at risk of contracting deadly panleukopenia. Central California SPCA have an outbreak of panleuk (Feline panleukopenia or feline distemper) and they have 30,000 cats passing through their facility annually. They use PetSmart as an outlet for adoptions …
An animal adoption centre failed on this occasion to vaccinate the cats at their centre. They imported, from a rural shelter, cats that they were told were healthy. They took them in good faith on the basis that there were no signs of disease. You can guess what happened. The 38 cats that they …
No, you can’t catch a cold from your cat and neither can your cat catch your cold. The reason is because the viruses that cause cat colds (flu) and human colds are “animal specific”. Each species of relevant cold-causing viruses only have the ability to invade the cells of a certain host and replicate …
Thirty-five commonly used disinfectants were tested in a study published on Europe PubMed Central. They were tested for their “virucidal activity” (their capacity to destroy or inactivate viruses) against: feline rhinotracheitis virus (a herpesvirus – FHV). Herpes virus is the most common amongst cats with feline calcivirus (FCV); feline calicivirus (as many as 50% of …
