Last Monday one of the trappers I work with brought me a young female cat that had a litter of 3-4 week old kittens. She was lethargic and dehydrated; I gave her 200ml of saline solution subcutaneous, but it did no good. She was slightly uncomfortable but put up no resistance and her condition did not improve afterward. She was taken to the University of Pennsylvania's veterinary hospital, where she tested positive for FELV and because of her depleted condition was euthanized.
Her kittens went to a foster who bottle-fed them, but three of them quickly became very sick and died. I was given the survivor, the lone male who seems at this time to be robust and beginning to eat solid food (a KMR slurry at this point). I have him for the long weekend and then our kitten expert will take over, and I expect him to survive.
But that's where the odds get long and the prospects get ugly. If the mom was FELV positive the retrovirus could have been passed to them either in utero or through tainted milk while nursing; they have little to no immunities at that age. In a month he'll be tested for FELV (he's too small right now to get a blood sample for an ELISA test); if positive he'll be retested after two months--false positives are a factor when testing kittens.
The best case scenario is that he's negative. The worst case scenario is that he's positive and we've kept him alive just long enough to be humanely euthanized (that requires an IV injection, which cannot be easily done until the kitten reaches a certain size).
Needless to say, I'll be on pins and needles for at least the next month....
Her kittens went to a foster who bottle-fed them, but three of them quickly became very sick and died. I was given the survivor, the lone male who seems at this time to be robust and beginning to eat solid food (a KMR slurry at this point). I have him for the long weekend and then our kitten expert will take over, and I expect him to survive.
But that's where the odds get long and the prospects get ugly. If the mom was FELV positive the retrovirus could have been passed to them either in utero or through tainted milk while nursing; they have little to no immunities at that age. In a month he'll be tested for FELV (he's too small right now to get a blood sample for an ELISA test); if positive he'll be retested after two months--false positives are a factor when testing kittens.
The best case scenario is that he's negative. The worst case scenario is that he's positive and we've kept him alive just long enough to be humanely euthanized (that requires an IV injection, which cannot be easily done until the kitten reaches a certain size).
Needless to say, I'll be on pins and needles for at least the next month....