Thread title says it all. (Reuters)
Do what you can to keep kitty safe, too!
yeah those tigers getting infected threw everyone for a loop … although housecats are social animals … how you gonna explain to tabby you cant give the normal expected affection?
My cats are indoor cats, and nobody’s been over to the house for a few months. I’ve been going out only for essentials when necessary, so I think my cats are okay. Good to know though–thanks!
My Siameezers are antisocial anyway.
I’m so NOT trying to put masks on them.
Handwashing they might like, they love running water.
(:))
I don’t think mine would stand having her paws washed for 20 seconds each.
They may get infected with the virus, but the real question is, does it affect them the same way?
The tigers involved raised a flag because they had a dry cough, so at least to that extent they have a similar symptom.
Clearly, you need to treat your household cats as other families members you may be self-isolating with. I realize that cats accustomed to roaming may be hard to keep in the house, but that would be an ideal.
Feral alley cats are all over the place. Will they become carriers of the disease, like mice with hanta and rats with the Plague of old?
Probably not like plague rats, because they gave it to fleas, and it was the fleas biting humans that transferred the disease. But wow, is there going to be a campaign against feral cats. I can see PSAs against touching stray cats, and Animal Control in hazmat suits rounding them up for immediate destruction.
I’ll bet a lot of shelters are just going to destroy all their adult cats, since no one is going to adopt a new cat during the lockdown.
I am glad our cat is indoor-only. She is safe unless one of us gets it. Cripes. So really, we don’t have anything to fear from her, we just have to worry about making her sick. She’s almost 13, too. And my son loves her so much. Right now, she is his favorite living creature in the world. He actually goes out less than the rest of us. Maybe we should confine her to his room.
Wow, I just remembered-- in some places without long-standing spay/neuter programs, cats are EVERYWHERE. In Jerusalem, there’s a cat every ten feet, whichever way you turn, I’m really not exaggerating. They are all over Israel in general, but especially in Jerusalem. People feed them, and a lot of them have semi-pet status-- that is, they have a round of homes they go to every day or couple of days for food, and they get affection; they are allowed on porches, and get some shelter from rain, but they don’t ever go inside, and no one takes them to the vet.
Pretty much describes my situation as well. In the time before the Corona virus crisis, I’d had two indoor and one outdoor cat. But in anticipation of a move I had, with great trepidation, brought the outdoor cat indoors, fingers crossed that he’d neither go stir crazy or pick fights with the two indoor cats (both behaviors having figured into my reluctant decision to turn him into an outdoor cat in the first place).
In the event, he adapted instantly to indoor life. I made my move and all three cats are doing well as indoor cats in the new place. Whew.
I’m a “facts first” person, so if there are legitimate issues surrounding cats and virus transmission, we need to face them and act accordingly - humanely, but accordingly.
My fear, however, is that a few sickos will use this as an excuse to torture or cruelly execute innocent and harmless cats. Damn, I sure hope that doesn’t happen.
Connoisseurs of feline geography know that, the way Harajuku has a Cat Street, Jerusalem has a Cat Square. Presumably so called because of all the cats. I had heard Israel has some funding for trap-neuter-release sterilization of feral cats, but evidently not enough.
But can they transmit back to humans?
Unknown.
Can it jump from humans to cats?
I don’t see how there’s any other way it could have. The tigers caught it from the trainer.
Istanbul, too. It’s one of my favorite things about Istanbul.
How serious is it for cats?
Unknown.
You might notice that is the answer to quite a few questions about this new virus. Because it’s new.
There is much confusion here.
Coronaviruses come in many flavors. One strain infects cats, and it is an intestinal bug. Most cats suffer an episode, and it clears up. It is prevalent in kenneled cats, such as an animal shelter, where it spreads easily. In a VERY small percentage of cats who suffer the benign version of gut rumbles from coronavirus, the virus mutates inside of them. It stays in the gut, and does terrible things. The cats suffer a wasting disease, and fluid collects in their abdomens. It becomes an awful version of coronavirus called “Feline Infectious Peritonitis.”
It’s fatal.
It is something that stays in the cat population, though, no cross-species infection that I know of.
I lost a cat to FIP. And it is the reason why I will never adopt a rescue again.
I am going to be following this coronavirus now causing respiratory infections in the big cats. I’m curious as to how they were infected, and if the infection can be transmitted to people.
The one thing I learned when I researched coronavirus after I lost my poor kitty, was that this damned thing MUTATES.
~VOW
(RIP, Peri. I’ll meet you one day at Rainbow Bridge)