Thanks Belinda--I'm keeping this in a special folder for future ref!
Kerry
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Belinda
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2006 8:28 AM
To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org
Subject: Re: Introduction and new cat question - My experience - sorry
guys it's long
Leslie,
> Negative cats can live with positive cats? I'd love to hear more
> about this from anyone that has/is successfully done it.
To answer your question, I have over the course of the last 11 years
mixed negatives and positives. Bailey joined us back in 1995, I had 3
cats at that time and they were all vaccinated and negative, when I
found Bailey he was 5 months old and tested positive. I had him
separated in his own room while I was trying to figure out how to
convince hubby we were keeping him. My negatives at that time were
Joey, 4 months old, Fred, about 4 years old, and Teenye, about 11 years
old, all negative all vaccinated. I came home one day after having
Bailey for about 5 months and couldn't find Joey, well the little
stinker finally came out from under Bailey's bedroom door, he'd been
sneaking in there playing with Bailey all along while I was at work.
Well I didn't see any point in keeping them separate anymore, Joey had
unknowingly exposed himself and everyone else for the last 5 months. I
decided Bailey had found us for a reason and left everything to my faith
in a higher power.
I just lost Bailey on May 6th, 2006, 5 days after he turned 11 years
old, he succumbed to pancreatic cancer which my vet say's mostly likely
wasn't even related to his FeLV+ status, he was just unfortunate enough
to get this type of cancer. In 11 years nobody ever got it from Bailey,
all of my guys, ate, groomed, played, slept and on occasion had spats
together. Joey and Bailey were very close and Joey so about 2 or 3
years ago I had him PCR (DNA) tested to be sure he wasn't positive and
he wasn't, if anybody would have gotten it would have been him. Every
year before vaccinations I had the negatives tested, everyone stayed
negative. My vet wasn't in the least bit worried about them all living
together, it's a well known fact to anyone that is knowledgeable about
FeLV that it isn't as easy to catch as way too many vets who are NOT
knowledgeable on FeLV will tell you. A healthy, adult, vaccinated cat
has almost zero chance of getting it from a positive, and if they did
their own immune system would almost certainly fight it off and they
would turn negative.
Kittens are alittle more susceptible but in my personal experience back
in the 90's before I even know what FeLV was I had 5 cats all indoor, my
then vet didn't tell me to vaccinate them for FeLV and being all indoor
I wasn't too worried about it. Well long story short, come to find out
4 of my 5 were positive, Buddie whom I got at 8 weeks of age and she
wasn't vaccinated for FeLV either at that time because at that time I
didn't know I had any positives, she was the only one who tested
negative when I did have them all tested. So this 8 week old
unvaccinated kitten was around unknown positives all along and never got
it. Teenye tested positive but turned negative and the other three I
lost in a 15 month period to cancer and anemia. I don't know how many
were positive when I got them because being naive back then and having a
vet who wasn't very knowledgeable about it I never had any of them
tested until one got sick.
The current statistics say 1/3 of the positives will fight it off and be
negative, I personally think that number is higher, because in my
opinion many are never diagnosed, 1/3 will have it and be unsymptomatic
for all or most of their lives, many of these in my opinion remain
undiagnosed also, so people may have positives and never know it, and
1/3 may be sickly most of their lives and will eventually succumb to an
opportunistic disease such as lymphoma, an anemia related illness, or
something as simple as a severe URI, chronic herpes, or other viral
infection that they just can't fight off. Of the last 1/3 that are
sickly many will get it while very young, at birth or soon after birth.
But as with anything there are exceptions to this rule also and Bailey
is a testament to that, at 5 months he was already positive and who
knows when he contracted it. He was healthy all his life until about
the last year or so, his first problem was with his teeth, we fixed that
and he was fine again until his last 5 months when he turned up anemic
which we corrected, but we never could find the cancer we were sure he
had. We didn't find it until he past and like I said my vet didn't
think his positive status had anything to do with it, it wasn't a cancer
that is associated or common with positives.
ANY vet who suggests killing a cat simply because they test positive
would NOT be touching any of my furkids, if they are that ignorant about
the virus, who knows how ignorant they are about other things??
--
Belinda
happiness is being owned by cats ...
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