First things first: Bill came through his surgery just fine. The vet just did the left knee because he didn’t think the right one needed it. Bill will go home this afternoon and then has to be confined for six weeks so his leg can heal properly.
Now everyone send prayers and thoughts to Ann, because I swear it’s worse to be nurse than the patient in these cases!
Robyn…I know you have a lot of experience with testing of FeLV with your fosters…I found a kitty in our garden (eating twigs and leaves last week) she was quickly moved into the laundry room(away from our other 2 cats) and is doing well, resting playing, being affectionate. Today she was micro-chipped and received shots and the testing for FeLV came back as a “slight positive” (from our local Humane Society). From your experience have you seen any of your fosters with that result and at a later date (with other testing) come back as a negative? I plan to take her to the vet in a couple of weeks for secondary testing.
Any insight you can provide, from your personal experience, would be greatly appreciated.
I have actually not had any of my fosters come back positive for FeLV, but I’ve heard of people who’ve had cats initially test positive for FeLV and then ultimately come back negative. (Amy, wasn’t Tabitha FeLV positive at first?) Anyone who’s had experience, please share in the comments!
Sights from around Crooked Acres.
“Places to go, scratch to eat, outta my way!”
Toasty the rooster, eyeballing his wimminfolk.
Apparently the ducks have a whole routine in the afternoon. When they hear Fred come into the back forty, they waddle up to the front where the coop is, and then they accompany him to the pond, where he tosses scratch in the water, and they eat it. Spoiled rotten ducks, is what they are.
The pups with their rawhide bones.
Sweet Gracie.
“Come ON! We wants our scratch!”
The view from the pond, toward the house.
I’m so glad they’re finally spending a lot of time out at the pond. It only took a year!
::thlurrp::
After a rousing round of “Gracie! Graaaacie! Over here, Gracie! Look at me!”, Gracie stood up, grabbed her bone, and stomped away from me.
Leaving George to ignore me all by himself.
I tossed a few stale bagel halves to the chickens. This is what chickens do – one of them picks up the bagel half and runs off with it.
But chickens are, perhaps, not the brainiest animals in the barn yard. As they’re running around with food in their mouth, they are also screaming “I HAVE FOOD I HAVE FOOD THERE IS FOOD IN MY MOUTH AND I AM GOING TO GO RIGHT OVER HERE AND EAT IT! THIS FOOD! THAT IS IN MY MOUTH!”
Which gets the attention of other chickens, who come over and are all “Whatcha got there?”
“Oh, nothing! Why, who said I had something?”
“What… is that a blueberry bagel? Stale, like I like it?”
“Bagel? No! There’s no bagel here!”
“But, you were yelling that you had food, and I see a bagel right there…”
“Nope, no bagel here, blueberry or otherwise!”
Miz Poo loves to sit and look out the window. She also likes to sneeze on the window. She gives and gives, that girl.
Something appears to have annoyed the Poo.
Miz Poo in the Kat Kabin.
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Previously
2011: Opie’s the kitten most likely to bite your big toe.
2010: “Lady, hey. Lady. LADY! Pet me?”
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: Merry’s got the crazy eyes going on.
2005: No entry.
Fostering a kitten with seemingly chronic upper respiratory. It’s amazing the surfaces that she sneezes upon and leaves gigantic snots in her wake. Which reminds me… I need to pry the old dried up snot off my husband’s chair before he comes home for Christmas 😉
Still boggles my mind that bagels get stale at your house…
Pssst, there’s some spanking to be had in last year’s post!!
Okay…. I’ve got to say I was completely mind-boggled when you directed me to a spanking post, but I’m just so glad I clicked to see my man Spanky! Auto-correct is a fabulous thing, isn’t it? 😉
LOL!
Not auto-correct. Did you see my comment yesterday?
https://www.love-and-hisses.com/?p=4732&cpage=1#comment-41733
HAhaHAhaHAhaHA!!!!!!!!! I missed it until you pointed me in that direction. I LOVE IT! 🙂
*waves hand* I joined the Felv club a few years ago. Jack was tested negative as a kitten but an exposure a few years later because of a foster experience he ended up testing positive. Eight weeks later he tested positive again. I supplemented him with vitamin c after reading http://www.amazon.com/The-Very-Healthy-Cat-Book/dp/007004354X . A lot of vets feel that cats make their own vitamin c so it does not need to be supplemented, but more and more are starting to understand that under times of stress they don’t make enough. Vitamin C isn’t “a cure” for felv, but it does help, and in my case after a year I had Jack tested again and he tested negative. I still give it to the cats in time of stress
Waaaaaahhhhhhh! I miss the pigs. *off to find previous pics of them*
Found them-for me, today is NOT Dec 20, 2012 but instead is Sept 27, 2012. Only 89 days till Christmas (and the temperature is much more preferable too)!
Holly, don’t wait till the last minute to get all your shopping done, even with 89 days, Christmas will be here before you know it.
I found a few gifts left on my list. Called my husband and found out he will be home on Saturday. I assigned the rest to him. Finishing holiday shopping? Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy 😉
I still haven’t baked a thing (and I always give quick breads and cookie platters to the kids’ teachers). Last day of school before break is tomorrow. I forecast a long night.
Connie-thanks for that word of caution. I’m sure you are right which is why I am done shopping. Whatever has not been bought already (except for food) ain’t gonna be bought-well at least until I figure out who has the best AFTER Christmas sales. But with weather on its way and crowds a’building, I am not going to venture more than 7 minutes down the road till next year.
Mz Poo must turn into a chicken with a bagel once she’s in the Kat Kabin! 😉
Oh, Poo. Your prettily piquant profile.
I love me some Poo!!
Wait, that sounds wrong…
First picture of Ms. Poo…thinking deep thoughts. Or not. Purty girl.
Just chiming in on FeLV (RVT who also works in a shelter here 🙂 ). When we have a cat test positive for FeLV, we quarantine them for 60 days and re-test them. Some cats are able to mount an immune response and throw off the virus in that time. But in the meantime, those poor cats aren’t able to socialize with anyone else in case they are positive or negative! In those cases, it is nice to have fosters with no other cats so they can get a break from sitting in a cage that whole time. And yes, we keep our FeLV cats, we have a separate room where they all hang out together!
How old is the kitty that tested positive for Feleuk? My Katie, who I have had since she was three weeks old, at eight weeks tested positive and we assumed that she was born to a feleuk mamma. However, she had been nursing from a non-feleuk mamma (we had a mixed-up batch of mammas and babies at that point) and her next test came back negative. She is now six and a healthy beautiful girl.
I’ve seen two different results with feleuk, and it seems to be dependent on the age at which they are exposed. Kittens that are feleuk due to in utero exposure tend to have shorter life spans because the feleuk is so hard on their bodies (thatnk God Katie was an exception!). Cats that acquire feleuk when older can do pretty well for a long time if they are cared for and not stressed.
So glad to hear Bill came through sugery ok. He’ll now be in a cast probably and wearing a cone of shame. that’s going to be a long six weeks for everyone involved.
That black and white chicken really is pretty. Love those markings and feathers.
This says it all:
http://cheezburger.com/6355839744
LOL!
Tabitha kept testing positive for FeLV on her ELISA tests, though the IFA (the “stronger” test for FeLV) was negative… Because I had 3 other adult cats (who reacted very badly to Tabitha and there had been fights) and was trying to keep Tabitha’s 4 negative kittens healthy, I made the tough decision to send Tabitha to a FeLV rescue near Charleston. But to my knowledge Tabitha is still a healthy, happy girl down there, and she may never develop the full disease. I would have loved to have kept her, but just did not have the space to keep 8 cats/kittens segregated properly for everyone’s safety. And Tabitha’s kittens are 9 months old now (3 were adopted and I still have Sabrina), and all of them are healthy and still negative for FeLV!
So I would definitely keep the kitten and have them do the IFA test on her, assuming the ELISA was the first test. There is always the chance she can throw the virus off and test negative later, too! And even though FeLV is called “highly contagious”, it really still needs a good puncture wound (or sex) to transfer from cat to cat, and I have heard of many owners who let their FeLV cats socialize freely with their non-FeLV cats.
But please do not send her to a shelter if she stays positive…even a lot of “non-kill” shelters still euthanize FeLV cats as policy… 🙁 I’m sure we can help find a FeLV rescue for her if that becomes necessary!
I received my package from CafePress last night. The calendars are GREAT! Love the pic of Tommy and Sugarbutt – well – I love ALL the pics. I got an Inspector Stompers mug for work – so he is staring at me as I type. Even though I don’t drink, I got the shot glass because it was just way too funny not to.
Thank you Robyn.
I fostered two kittens from the same litter last summer, one of whom tested a faint positive for FeLV (the other tested negative) on a SNAP test. When we tested her two months later, she came up negative and, so far as I know, continues to live leuk-free. So yes, it’s possible. In fact, I’ve read that it’s not uncommon for a kitten with a weak positive to test negative later on. Is feline leukemia common where you live? It is where I am (industrial Brooklyn), so I was worried that the kittens would succumb to it, but happy when they didn’t! Good luck!
We took in a litter of 4 4-week old kittens earlier this year, one tested negative for FeLV, the other 3 tested faint positive. The 3 were quarantined together and re-tested after 60 days, at which point they tested negative.
Thank you for all the advice about my FeLV kitty…It is good to hear your experiences and Robyn thank you for asking your followers for help. She is a year old and the first test was a ELISA test ..we are going to wait a couple of weeks and have the IFA test done…trying to keep her well fed and healthy (she is showing no signs of being ill) and stress free and we are able to keep her in a room away from our other 2 cats. Thanks again Mary
FWIW, we had a FeLV+ cat – he was tested at least twice, I think maybe three times. The first test – when he was a wee kitten who’d walked up to me and my husband in the parking lot of our workplace – came back positive, but we were told kittens often test positive if their mothers are positive and that he could throw off the virus, so we should test him again in [I think it was 12 but I’m not sure] weeks. He stayed FeLV+, but clearly not all cats do – they can come back negative after an initial positive. (I think it’s sort of a catch-22 – the younger the kitten, the more likely that a positive will be a false positive; but the younger the kitten, the more vulnerable they are to getting it. As I understand it, at least, which may not be very well at this point; we did most of our research about this back in 2001 when we first got the kitty.)
Also FWIW, by the time he came back positive again we were absolutely completely attached and couldn’t find anyone else who would take him, so we kept him. We had two adult non-FeLV kitties, who were totally healthy and had been vaccinated against FeLV their entire lives. We began by keeping them completely separated, then we let them visit with each other, then moved to letting the FeLV kitty out in main population much of the time but fed them separately, had separate litter boxes, and kept the FeLV kitty in a separate room at night. But eventually we gave up and the cats all lived together without any barriers, sharing food/water/litter boxes. We decided it was worth the possible risk – our vet told us the possibility that our adult immunized cats with healthy immune systems would get FeLV was very low, and we felt that even if they did, it wouldn’t make a difference – we weren’t going to euthanize any of them. We never had the non-FeLV kitties tested to see if they actually had got the virus, but one lived to be 18 (finally had to be put to sleep due to hyperthyroid and possible cancer) and the other is still with us at 20 (with hyperthyroid, renal failure, a brain tumor, and a liver tumor…but still with us). So I can’t imagine FeLV did them any harm.
Our FeLV+ kitty was an amazing treasure. He lived 7 years and showed absolutely no signs of disease (except semi-bad gums) until the last year of his life, when he had pneumonia once – which was easily treated with antibiotics – and then succumbed to the pernicious anemia FeLV cats are subject to. We were very lucky, I know, because FeLV cats can have some chronic problems with their gums/teeth or eye ulcers (probably others I can’t remember). But I firmly believe that FeLV cats can have very high quality lives (if very likely shorter), and would have one again, and would mix one with adult healthy immunized cats. (Obviously this would be different with kittens or immune-compromised cats.) The shelter I volunteered for euthanized FeLV+ but not FIV, but I can kind of see that – since FeLV is spread by saliva and FIV is spread only through contact with blood, it’s technically more contagious, and thus I’m sure harder to deal with in the shelter setting. But I’d have one in my home again.
(Sorry to ramble, it’s late here!)