Testing for Feline Leukemia

[Sillymoose]

Well I found a kitty yesterday while out trail riding. Pending anyone claiming him, it looks like he’s possibly going to push our house into crazy cat family status at number 5. So my first order of business was to have him tested for feline leukemia just to make sure he was safe to be in the house with my other cats. The vet however told me that since he is so young (10-12 months) that the test wouldn’t really be necessary. She told me that he’s not really susceptible at that age and since he appears healthy and my other cats are fully vaccinated that it would be a waste of money to test him.

But before I lifted his quarantine, I wanted to do a little more research and make sure that was indeed true. Any thoughts? I just don’t want to take any chances. Thanks.

[GoForAGallop]

Eh, around here the test costs something like $20. Worth $20 to me to know that I’m not exposing my healthy cats to something they don’t need to be exposed to.

And 5 doesn’t put you into crazy cat lady territory! I had 13 in my house at once last year, and 7 of them were wild, crazy ferals! (Who were all eventually tamed and rehomed to lovely indoor homes.) I’m back down to six now, all indoor. Thank goodness I have a big old farmhouse!

[Dry_Clean_Only]

That is totally incorrect and crappy crappy medicine. It’s never a bad idea to FIV/FELV test, even a sick adult cat gets combo tested first when ill.

Leukemia is a kitten disease but he could be carrying it, or FIV which they can survive with for years.

Time for a vet who is up to date on current protocols!

[Sillymoose]

That’s kind of what I thought. My regular vet couldn’t squeeze me in today and is closed for the long weekend till wed. ( ugh. Military vets). And the other clinic we use told me he would have to be sedated to draw blood, which would mean withholding food. Just seems like too much trouble for a simple test. Looks like I’ll have to find someone else tomorrow before the weekend.

[Pancakes]

Yep, that other vet gave you bad information.

FIV/FeLV testing can be done at ANY age; however, if the kittens are young enough, false results can be obtained because of maternal transfer as well as incompletely developed immune systems. Then those need to be re-tested later (usually minimum 60 days) to confirm/deny results.

That said…ANY new feline addition to a feline household should be tested for FIV/FeLV, no matter what the age.

http://www.idexx.com/pubwebresources/pdf/en_us/smallanimal/snap/triple/aafp-feline-retrovirus-management-guidelines.pdf

You can print that out and hand it to the vet

[Simkie]

Whoa, what?

I have tested multiple kittens at 6 weeks for FeLV and FIV and I have never had a vet tell me it was not worth doing!

[ndirish07]

I’ve had all my cats tested for FeLV and FIV… the most recent street turned house cat lived in the garage until he was tested. The vet got us in two days after I found him. He was not allowed inside with the girls until we knew. It’s just not worth the risk. The Street cat, Beau, was only 8 months old (approximately). My vet said it’s always a good idea to test before introducing cats.

[McVillesMom]

Agreed, he should be tested. And unless he is unusually badly behaved (like a couple of mine :o) he shouldn’t need to be sedated for a simple blood draw.

And you definitely haven’t reached crazy cat family status! When asked how many cats qualifies for crazy cat person, remember the answer is always: One more than you have! :winkgrin:

[TheUnderstudy]

Rule of thumb where I work is test once they are 2lbs or 2 months. We work with a lot of feral and stray cats and I would definitely recommend doing the test before introducing said kitty to your cats. The test only takes minutes to run (well the one we use) and it may save you a lot of trouble down the road. Just my advice. Good Luck with everything…and I just took in a 5th cat…now we can both be crazy lol.

[seeuatx]

[QUOTE=Sillymoose;5627229]
The vet however told me that since he is so young (10-12 months) that the test wouldn’t really be necessary. She told me that he’s not really susceptible at that age and since he appears healthy and my other cats are fully vaccinated that it would be a waste of money to test him. [/QUOTE]

:eek:

That is so wrong I don’t even know where to begin. Actually I do… the tale of two kittens gifted to the barn by the local feral cat. One was an adorable Tabby girl and the other a Coal black rambunctious little boy. I took them both home after they had their shots done by the barn cat clinic place. I thought that since they had their shots and were so young, as well as going to be indoor cats I had nothing to worry about until it was time to spay/neuter.

Amber was always the quiet one, but one day a few months later she started acting lethargic and breathing funny. I though maybe she had a little kitty cold so I took her to the vet clinic. A few hours and several hundred dollars later I held her in my arms as they euthanized her because she tested FeLV+ and had a tumor growing into her trachea that was slowly suffocating her. She was only 6 months old.

I brought her brother in 2 days later to test and he is also FeLV+, though he has been healthy since day one. The vets monitor him and test bloodwork every six months to make sure nothing is hiding from us. They theorize that Mama cat (that feral cat) passed the disease to them through nursing.

[MizzouMom]

Yep, like they said, bad advice.

The little feluk girl we just lost turned up at our house about age 6-7 weeks. She tested positive at that age for the initial antibodies test, and again tested positive (is the second test the ELISA Pancakes?) with the test that showed the active virus in her bloodstream at age 7-8 months, at which point we knew she was just…positive.

My vet believes that even the kittens who test positive initially and then revert to negative are harboring it in their bone marrow and it re-emerges later.

A stray brought this into our household years ago and hung around for weeks before we adopted him and had him tested, then started vaccinating all the others in a panic when we found out he had this, which I had never heard of. One susceptible cat recovering from injuries who would co-groom with him had already been infected but initially tested negative - we went through a tell-tale hemobartonella infection with her but didn’t connect the dots. Not knowing she was already sick, I kept her and the others vaccinated for years until she finally succumbed to the virus after living with it for 10-12 years.

Since losing this kitten last week I’m operating under a new theory that cats infected as adults might live long lives, but kittens born with it have much less time.

[chai]

Sillymoose, the information your vet gave you is incorrect. My son found 2 kittens along the side of the road when he was jogging last summer. He brought them home and we kept them away from the other cats because they were really sick. When the first course of antibiotics didn’t work, the vet suggested that we test for FeLuke and sure enough, both were positive. They were so tiny, they couldn’t have been more than 8 - 12 weeks old.
Fortunately, they responded to great food, tlc and a new course of antibiotics and they are thriving. They will never be allowed to interact with our other cats, though, for their safety and the safety of the other kitties in our home.
Good for you for taking in this kitty, but I hope you will keep the new one well away from the others and consider having it tested for FeLuke. Also, if 5 cats puts us in the crazy cat lady category, count me in because kitty number 5 showed up in a hav a hart trap we put out for what we thought was a raccoon shortly after the little fe luke babies joined our family.

We’re living the life of the adorable children’s book, So Many Cats, I used to read to my kids. Beatrice Shenk de Regniers must be a cat lady, too, because I love the lines in the book, 'We had a cat, An only cat. He was a sad and lonely cat. So when a very hungry cat came making a great din. Meowing, Mewing, Scratching at our door. We thought This could be the very cat To make our cat a happy cat and so we Let her in - ittle knowing we were getting more than we had bargained for."

[Sillymoose]

Thanks everyone. Yeah I suppose 5 isn’t that many. That’s what I thought when there were only 4 of them but its so easy to just add one more. Lol. I will definitely be getting him tested. I thought that info seemed really far out. When I was a kid we had a kitten that ended up testing positive and had to be PTS very shortly afterwards at around 6 months, so I thought that was really weird for them to indicate that only adults were susceptible. Oh well. I haven’t been to that clinic in years and I guess that just confirms why. Back to the drawing board tomorrow. Then on to neuter and microchip. Joy.

[PRS]

My daughter adopted a kitten from a pet store where she assumed she was properly tested and vetted. She was heart broken to find that she had to have the cat put down when she was right around a year old due to FeLuke. The cat was having some trouble breathing and the vet confirmed it with tests. The cat had fluid around her heart that the vet drained off to make the her more comfortable so my daughter could have one more day with her pet. The vet told me then that kittens can get FeLuke from their infected mother which is probably what happend to my daughter’s cat since she hadn’t been exposed to any other cats once my daughter took her home as a tiny kitten. A 10 or 12 month old cat is almost full grown and certainly old enough to have contracted the disease and be tested for it.