My Experience with Feline Leukemia

I have been rescuing stray cats for as long as I can remember. I probably started bringing them home when I was around eight years old. My mom would always shake her head and say, "Another one?" I don't recall any of our cats ever dying from any disease, so I am unsure if these diseases developed over the years or if they have existed for a long time, but maybe just weren't as widespread before, or maybe our cats were just lucky.

For the last eleven years, since my husband and I got our first house, I have been continuing my efforts to help stray cats. At first I did it on my own, incurring the cost of vet visits. I would then find a suitable home for each cat if I didn't keep it myself. After a couple of years of this, I turned to the animal control officer for help. A couple of more years brought the development of an animal rescue to our town. I of course joined it. The number of strays I dealt with increased greatly with my participation in the animal rescue. Sometimes the cat would get to the vet right away and other times it would take awhile. Most all of them, whether they'd been vetted or not, were brought into our home and around our other cats. I had never experienced any problems other than a cold here and there. That all changed in April of this year, 2007.

A year ago while I was helping clean up at the end of the monthly doggie wash on a Saturday for the animal rescue, a woman walked in with a carrier. The only other two people there from the rescue was the couple who ran it. The woman told them that some people from her apartment building had moved and left their cat to roam in and around the building. She said she couldn't keep it herself and asked if the rescue could take it. I was not too happy when they told her that they had no room and it would have to go to the pound, but no one could take it until Monday. Dismayed, the woman said that the cat would just have to stay outside because it was causing havoc when it got inside the apartment building. It was going to be fairly cold that night and I couldn't stand there and let her walk away to basically throw that cat out in the cold. I told her I would take it, and then I told the couple who ran the rescue that I would foster it until they found a home for it. They said they would make a vet appointment for the cat and let me know when I should bring him in.

When I got home and opened the carrier, out walked a very furry long haired dark gray cat with white on his chest and stomach. He was breathtakingly handsome, for a cat. He walked right over to my leg and rubbed up against it, meowing loudly and began to purr. I was instantly hooked. I checked him over and noticed he was neutered already. He looked very healthy with big yellow eyes and a smooth, shiny coat of fur. My husband and son chose the name Ash for him. It didn't take long to find out that Ash liked to go outside. What little time he was in the house he pretty much kept to himself. He didn't like our other cats or our dogs much, but not to the point of fighting with them. He was very shy. There were even times when I would catch him outside with a stray cat trying to bother him, and Ash would just cower. He was not sociable with other cats. He did like raccoons though.

About two weeks had passed and I had not gotten a call of a time to take Ash to the vet. I called and asked about the appointment. I was told that the rescue just didn't have the money at that time and it would have to wait or I'd have to pay for it myself. It wasn't possible for me to cover the cost so I told them I would wait. I was a bit aggravated because I had been told upon offering to foster Ash that the rescue would put an ad out for him. Nothing was being done about that either. I was told that they just hadn't gotten around to it yet. Not being a pushy type of person, I just asked if they would try to do what they could.

After two months, I had a falling out with the animal control lady and the couple who ran the rescue. I had been volunteering at the pound for two weeks in June because the animal control lady had been begging people from the rescue to start helping out at the pound. I was the only one who had come forward. A couple of days into my helping at the pound, the animal control lady became too busy to come out there and do anything. I was stuck cleaning twice a day. I also walked the dogs once a day and took care of their food and water. The cats pretty much only needed their litter boxes cleaned. After a week of doing this, I could barely lift my right arm because of dealing with the hose to clean out the cages inside and outside, and from walking the dogs, or more like being pulled along by the dogs. I asked the animal control lady when other members were going to start helping. She told me they were all pretty busy and told me to take a few days off. At the end of the second day I didn't go out there to work, I decided to go out that night and see how things were. I had become pretty attached to the dogs too so I wanted to see them. I was appalled when I walked in to find that the stalls were filled with waste from the dogs. They had no water, no food, and the litter boxes were overflowing with waste. Instead of saying something to the animal control lady, I just started cleaning that night. I went back out for the rest of that week. I had finally had enough when the weekend that another member from the rescue was supposed to come out at night and clean, didn't show up. I talked to the animal control lady and she basically told me that I could stop anytime I wanted, and that the other members of the rescue had lives and couldn't be expected to help out there. After this situation, they refused to do anything in regards to Ash. I never did get around to taking him to the vet.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that Ash had lost noticeable weight, and had something weird going on with his eyes. They weren't runny or anything but it was like something weird with his eyelid coming into his eyes. I immediately made an appointment at the vet. He took a blood sample to test him for feline leukemia. I didn't know very much about the disease other than it was deadly. I was quite shocked when I was told that Ash tested positive for it. It was bad enough knowing that a cat I had come to love so much in the last year had a disease that was slowly killing him, but to find out that it was more contagious than what I thought, sent me into a fit of crying at the thought of possibly losing more of my babies. It was even more devastating because of the cost involved. We live week to week as it is and to get our other eight cats tested alone was going to cost almost $500. If any of them tested positive, that would be another $32 per cat for the vaccination of any of them that weren't positive, so that we could keep the positive ones.

I found out that feline leukemia is not only transmitted through bites from the contagious cat, but also through their saliva and urine. So any cat that comes in contact with food, water or litter boxes that the contagious cat uses is susceptible to contracting the disease. When the contagious cat has a cold they are also dangerous because of the sneezing, runny nose and runny eyes. Since there is no way of knowing how long Ash has had the leukemia, there is no telling the likelihood of any of our other cats having leukemia also. A lady from the vet's office is going to try and talk to the animal control lady, who now is the President of the animal control, to try and convince her to help me with the cost of getting my cats tested and possibly vaccinated.

I have had to keep Ash in an unused upstairs room since finding out about his leukemia. He is very unhappy not being able to go outside. My kids and I go up there as often as we can to sit with him and hold him. He is doing ok for the most part right now, but has a constant cold, goes through periods of not wanting to eat at all or eating too much, and being overly active to being very depressed and just laying around. He has had what seems to be like a seizure twice, where he goes limp and then gets stiff and just meows this horrible howl. It lasts for about a minute. He is still having problems with his eyes. I found out that the freaky way they looked is because what is called his third eyelid, which is in the corner of each eye closest to the middle of his face, is coming into his eye area because of his cold.

I don't know what the future holds for Ash or the rest of my cats, but I have learned a very hard lesson through this.It is extremely dangerous to bring a cat around other cats that has not been tested for feline leukemia. It only costs $40 for the test, at least where I live. If the cat hasn't had a wellness exam and isn't up to date on it's shots then that will add a little to the cost. In the case of my cats, all of them need to have that done because they are all inside cats and haven't been to a vet since their first time. It is an experience I don't wish on anyone. I hope that if you read this, that you will spread the word to other cat lovers so that this disease will hopefully be prevented for more cats.