Bird Flu - Is Your Cat at Risk?

Bird flu has faded from the news to a large extent. This is not because of any conspiracy in news agencies and syndicates, reporters and editors, or the media in general to keep you from knowing about it. Most of us get our news from television, radio, and newspapers and magazines. To survive, these businesses must attract an audience. The news you see is to a large extent what they think will attract the audience that will motivate their sponsors to give them money. They have to sift through a huge volume of "news" every day and decide what has enough importance, entertainment value, and shock value. Bird flu just hasn't made the cut very often lately.

In 2006 thousands of birds in Europe died from bird flu, and they have found several cats that died from bird flu. Most of the cats apparently contracted the disease from eating dead or dying birds that were infected with bird flu, but some cats in Austria died in a shelter that had previously been used to house chickens that had the flu. According to the European Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the cats "might" have died from bird flu contracted from the chickens.

It has long been suspected from anecdotal reports in Asia that cats could be infected with bird flu. Then studies were published describing positive blood tests confirming the infection in cats, and microscopic examination of tissues showing that the infection spreads to many parts of the body in cats beside the lungs. Lesions and the virus were found in the brain, liver, kidney and digestive tract.

A more careful study was done in which cats were deliberately infected with the virus. In one group, an aerosol containing the virus was sprayed into the cats' windpipes. Another group was fed meat from birds that had the infection. The researchers also put additional cats in with each of these groups, but did not inoculate them with the virus.

Both groups of cats inoculated with the virus got sick and died, and the cats that were not inoculated also got sick and died. The results show that it is possible for cats to get bird flu not only from eating infected birds and inhaling the virus, but also by being exposed to other cats that have the disease.

An important question not answered by the experiment is; how likely is natural cat-to-cat spread of bird flu? The dose of virus the cats were exposed to might have been much larger than is likely under natural conditions. The virus may not spread as easily from cat to cat if they are not held together in a small cage.

Another question is; how likely is bird flu to cause any widespread infection, an epidemic perhaps, among a group of cats? This would be more likely in an area in which there were very large numbers of cats interacting closely, like a flock wild ducks, or a commercial poultry farm. Also, it seems so far that cats that are infected with bird flu die quickly. Infections are much more likely to cause epidemics if infected animals live for a longer time, so they can spread the disease more extensively before they die.

The chance of your cat dying anytime soon from bird flu appears to be pretty slim. To make those chances even better, keep your cats indoors and don't feed them raw meat. Besides bird flu, outdoor cats face many other perils like cars and dogs, and feeding raw meat carries risk of infection with toxoplasmosis, salmonella, and other infections and parasites.