Blind Cat News 1-21-2015

Thank you to everyone that came to visit for our January house! The cats loved having you visit!! Our next open houses will be 2/14, 3/14, 4/18 noon - 4

Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) We are a FIV+ cat sanctuary with a number of FIV+ cats in our sanctuary. Most have been with us since 2011 when we built the building for FIV & FELV+ cats. In general terms,they are healthy and happy and living a full life. FIV is a much misunderstood virus, which leads to many otherwise healthy cats being euthanized, in our view - unnecessarily. FIV Can NOT be transmitted to humans. Most FIV+ cats, properly cared for will remain healthy for years. It is the strays fighting for survival that will have poor health that is commonly thought of for all FIV+ cats. FIV is transmitted cat to cat mostly by biting. Cats fight for 3 reasons, food, territory and mating. Regular food and neutereing dramatically reduces the need to fight making the transmission of FIV far less likely. If your cat test FIV positive, first take a deep breath and know it will be ok. FIV is NOT contagious, it is transmitted almost always by a serious buite. The virus is present in the saliva, but lives out side of the body only for seconds. It is actually injected by a bite directly into contact with blood for it to be transferred to another cat. Should you mix positive and negative cats? Will they be seriously fighting? We have 12 FIV+ cats living together and have never had a serious fight. Once a cat is neutered, has regular food, a place to live has no reason to fight. Careful introducing a new member is all that is needed. If your vet suggests that the cat should be euthanized because of the FIV, change vets! There is no reason to put down a healthy animals. If it is suffering and sick from a secondary infection that is untreatable, that is a different thing, and putting the cat to sleep would be the humane thing to do just like you would for any cat. If you have an FIV+ cat, we hope you will take a few minutes to fill out this survey, it will help educate others and hopefully help save a few lives :) Here is the link: http://www.v63.net/fivcatslives/mycatsinfo.html

Introducing Happy!

Happy was found at a local feral colony that we feed. Obviously very friendly and sick, she made sure we noticed her. When we took her to the vet we realized how sick she was. She has severe anemia (probably from severe flea infestation) severe worms, a mouth infection that could be seen down to the bone (she had to be in so much pain) and tested FIV+ This was the week that the temperature was down in the teens at night. She wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Her fur is stained a brownish color that will not wash out, not sure where or what she got into. She is recovering nicely. As soon as we have her anemia under control she will get a much needed dental and spayed. She will be joining the FIV room when she is healthy. She is named Happy because she is a happy cat! She is looking for sponsors :) You may sponsor her at http://blindcats.org/happy.htm

Do you like to walk or Jog?

Please download the Resqwalk app to your iphone or droid and each time you walk they will donate to the blind cats! Cost you nothing :) $1.00 bonus for all apps donwloaded today (1/21/2015) Here is the link: http://www.resqwalk.com

Contests Updates: As you know, we won the catifcation contest with Jackson Galaxy :) Thank you so much for voting! We still have not heard from them. Due to Jackson’s filming and book tour schedule, they have 1 year to award the prize. The Eagle Rare Life contest will announce the winner the week of March 2. We promise you will be notified as soon as we know :)

Jake Update

Jake has his feeding tube out now, he is still struggling to maintain his weight. We may be going back to Raleigh to see the internal medicine doctor again. There are some other tests she wanted to run if he did not improve. We are going to give him a week, continue monitoring him and then reassess.