Recently, a lot of publicity has surrounded the "bird flu" epidemic. What you may not know is that this disease may be able to affect your cat and your cat’s health as well.

The avian influenza virus, commonly called "bird flu", in the recent press refers to the H5N1 subtype of the nfluenza A virus, which is a fancy way of saying that it a specific strain of the flu virus. This virus is spread from wild birds, who can carry the disease without becoming sick. This particular strain has proven to cause severe disease in poultry, such as chicken. It has been particularly catastrophic in Asia, Europe and Africa. To date, over 200 million commercial birds have died or been destroyed because of the disease.

As you probably already know, a number of people have been infected with the "bird flu" also. It is believed that most, if not all, of these people have had direct contact with infected birds. It is not believed, at the present time, that the virus is easily passed from person to person. However, there is some concern that person to person spread could become a problem in the future.

Health officials in the U.S. carefully monitor commercial bird flocks for evidence of "bird flu". There are a number of safeguards in place to help prevent the spread of the disease should it be found in the U.S.

A more recent concern is the possibility that "bird flu" could infect our pet cats. Reports from Germany indicate that a cat there has died of "bird flu". It is believed that this cat caught the disease by eating a wild bird which was infected with the virus.

There are a number of reports and research projects which confirm that "bird flu" can indeed affect a cat’s health. (Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol. 10, No. 2, Science, Vol. 306, Issue 5694, American Journal of Pathology, Vol. 168, No. 1) There is evidence also that the disease can be spread directly from one cat to another.

Can "bird flu" be spread from your cat to you? That’s not a simple question. At the present time, it is unlikely that this is possible. However, there is concern that this could become possible at some time in the future.

What can you do to protect your cat and yourself?

• Avoid feeding uncooked poultry products to your cat.
• Keep your cat indoors to reduce risk of exposure to "bird flu" through wild birds or other cats.

To learn more about keeping your cat healthy, visit Feline Health Care Corner right now.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Cat Diseases, Cats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.