Snowy Owl
Retired in 2010, In Memoriam
Warnings issued over cats with bird flu
NAIL down your cat flaps. Domestic cats are at higher risk of catching the H5N1 bird flu virus than previously thought.
Austrian health authorities last week announced that three out of 40 cats tested positive for the virus on saliva tests at an animal shelter in Graz that also housed infected birds. Yet the cats had no flu symptoms and shed no virus in their faeces, suggesting that a previously unrecognised mode of transmission might have been be at work.
H5N1 can make cats seriously ill. Usually cats eating infected birds develop the virus and shed it in mucus, urine and faeces. This is what is thought to have happened to three cats that died on the German island of R?gen.
The Austrian cats, however, merely shared premises with infected birds, and may have caught the virus from the birds' faeces or by sharing food, says Albert Osterhaus at Erasmus University at Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It is too early to say whether cats could pass on such mild infections to humans or other animals. Even so, hundreds of cats are reported to have been left at animal shelters in France and Germany over the past week by people afraid of bird flu.
?<quote><quotetext>Hundreds of cats have been left at animal shelters by people afraid of bird flu</quotetext></quote>?
From issue 2543 of New Scientist magazine, 18 March 2006, page 6