Okay, here’s the situation: a friend of mine who I haven’t seen in a while has a lot of cats. She just told me that several of her cats have Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP). She said that she was told she will have to replace her carpets and pretty much everything else and that “we don’t get many visitors anymore since we are basically under a plague status and will be for years” but that I can visit her because I don’t have cats right now. However, I do have friends who have cats. I told my friend who has five cats about this entire thing, and asked if this meant that I could never visit her house again if I visited this other friend’s house (the one with the FIP cats). She said that she thought it sounded very weird and that this woman sounded a bit nuts.
I don’t know what to think. Can a person somehow “catch” FIP from going over to a house where there are cats who have it, and then act as a carrier when they go over to another house where there are other cats (even if this is several days later, they’ve changed their clothes, etc)? How can this be right? I don’t think my FIP-cat-friend is exactly planning to never be in the same space as another person who may have cats, so how is that going to work? Is just being in the house with the carpets and furniture where the FIP cats were or having an FIP cat brush up against me enough to do it? Does anyone have any idea what could actually be going on here? It all just seems so odd.
Technically, FIP itself is not even contagious from cat to cat. It is caused by a coronavirus, which IS contagious, but most cats get over it with no problem. It’s when the coronavirus gets into a cat and for some reason mutates that it causes FIP. This happens to cats on an individual basis and not very often. At school, we don’t even isolate FIP cats. So it is highly unlikely that someone can pick it up on their clothes and transfer it to another cat in another household.
The only way I can think a human could be able to transfer FIP from one cat to the other would be to roll around in the infected cat’s feces, don’t wash their hands, and then let an uninfected cat lick the exposed areas.
All of that, though, reads pretty nasty and I still doubt you’d be able to transfer it. IIRC, coronavirus is not even the most stable virus out there (or not as stable as other viruses).
From my limited online understanding, the virus underlying FIP is easily transmitted through cat saliva and cat poop. So food and water bowls and litter boxes are the main source.
The virus is easily spread to a bunch of cats, but only cats with weak immune systems get FIP from the virus. So, keep an eye on the youngest and oldest cats.
It doesn’t sound like there’s any way that I would be able to spread it, though. Is there, even a slim chance? I mean, if I went to Friend #1’s house, accidentally touched a cat’s food, went home, washed my hands, took a shower, changed clothes, and then the next day, went over to Friend #2’s house where there are five other cats, petted one of those cats… is there ANY possibility?
I’m no vet, so I can’t say with any real authority but … ANY possibility? I suppose in a purely mathematical sense there is always SOME possibility. Your hypo sounds pretty remote though.
You have to consider that even if you manage to spread the underlying virus from a carrier cat to a non-carrier cat, that recipient cat has to have a weak enough immune system to get FIP from the virus infection. Otherwise, the virus just passes without a problem.
For example, my wife and I recently rescued two kittens off the street… two brothers from a litter. Both brothers probably got the underlying FIP virus from their mother at birth.
One kitten brother, Jack, had FIP and we had to put him down soon after we took them in. The other brother, Poppy, was probably a carrier of the underlying virus, but his immune system was sufficient to prevent onset of FIP, unlike poor Jack.
We have two other cats as well. I betcha those two kittens spread the underlying virus to our two older cats, but neither of them got FIP. It’s been about a year now since we took Poppy and Jack in, and the only FIP victim has been Jack. Poppy and our other two cats have probably carried the virus but harmlessly passed it, and all 3 are happy cats now.