We have 40 FeLV cats (and several kittens) at our special needs sanctuary
where they live in cage free environment with outdoor enclosed screened in
areas to spend time in. I so applaud those of you who care for a FeLV kitty
and offer them a forever home til there time is up. We work with rescues all
across the U.S. and there are just not enough homes to go around for these
special kits. I wanted to add my thoughts to the survey list:
We have cats from 4 months to 12 years currently residing at our sanctuary
home. We use Alpha interferon in their water daily and occasionally use oral
for some of the cats. They are fed Purina Pro Plan dry and get canned food
every day. The interferon in the water does help their immune systems we
feel.
I have had several non positive cats live with the positives and they
remained negative throughout the years they were living with the FeLV cats.
They also did not fight.
The kitties we lost to FeLV have lymphomas, cancer, anemia (with cancer
usually) or sudden total system failure (most likely caused by an undetected
cancer at the time).
The kittens we have worked with include:
a family whose mother and two siblings died of FeLV after rescue, and four
other youngsters that arrived to live with us for their lives-only one of
those is still with us and doing just fine.
The others we have are getting close to one year or two years and both of
those ages we find to be critical times for FeLV cats-
If they live through age 2 we see little health problems until age five-and
then some become symptomatic at age five and others do not and can go on to
live longer healthy lives. All of our FeLV are very healthy robust cats
until they become symptomatic.
These cats have little stress in their lives and are very happy to be back
outside in their outdoor areas with the weather starting to be nice in Iowa
now.
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