Are there any Vets on MN? Need advice about our cat ....

[ghosty]

Since we moved 10 months ago our cat has been to the vet no less than 4 times (not including the microchipping trip and a vaccination trip)
She has had 3 abscesses - caused by fights with neighbourhood (possibly feral) cats who are mightily pissed off with her being here, and one unexplained high fever accompanied by major lethargy and peeing on our bed because she was too poorly to get up and go out.
This is costing us a fortune. Today I had to cough up $375 for pretty major surgery to remove a large abscess caused by a bite from another cat.
I don't mind the cost really (she part of the family after all) but is this normal? This amount of to-ing and fro-ing to the vet I mean?
As cats go she is pretty rubbish ... she is clealy coming out worst in all these fights and she is crap at running away too (I have seen her try to scale walls etc in flight and it is a bit like a comedy sketch from a Garfield movie - scrabbling and flailing legs as she slides back down the wall )
But she is our pet and we do love her.
The Vet today said she could have FIV (Feline Immunodificiency Virus) which makes her susceptible to abscesses after hurting herself and is (funnily enough) caught from a bite of an infected cat
If she does have it what does it mean? And what kind of prognosis does she have? She has to have a blood test 60 days after this infection apparently and then we will know.
What can we do to avoid her getting into fights?
TIA
g x

Bump ...

Bump again ...

Ghosty - FIV is the feline version of AIDS. They can carry it and not develop symptoms or they can get a variety of different things. One of the most common presentations is a failure to fight off infections well - that does not necessarily mean repeated abscesses are a diagnostic sign though. A very high percentage of cat bites will lead to an abscess though regardless of FIV status. Probably the next most common sign we see is tumours related to FIV. It does not follow though that an FIV positive cat will develop these symptoms. Prognosis therefore does depend a lot on what symptoms are being shown. A positive result does however mean that the cat is at risk of transmitting to other cars. It is a virus passed on in body fluids - can be passed from mum to kittens but most cases are probably passed on through fighting in the first place. Responsible ownership for an FIV positive cat would be to ensure that it does not mix directly with other cats - ie ok in a cattery situation where they are not in contact, but not ok in a garden fight situation. For this reason most owners will keep them as indoor cats after diagnosis - that does however depend a lot upon the nature of the cat and the owners point of view too. It can not be enforced - just recommended. Some people do not see this as an issues to do, but many people are against keeping cats as indoor cats. One other option is to build an outdoor run so they can have some restricted outdoors time.

Feline leukaemia virus should probably also have been mentioned by the vets - Guess you are not in the UK though based upon the $ sign? Certainly here in the UK we have another virus that you could pretty much write the above paragraph for as well - FeLV. We do vaccinate for it here but that is not foolproof and certainly here we would always test for both at the same time. The vaccine does not interfere with the test so results are usually correct. That will depend on the country you are in and what the FeLV status is there I guess. Your vet should be able to advise on this.

Avoiding fights - nothing you can do to totally stop it. Keeping the cat in overnight may help as cats are often more active overnight and so more likely to fight then. If you know which cat(s) it is yours is fighting with you could approach the owners and discuss if it is possible to allow certain times for their cats to be kept in so yours can go out - but beware most people will probably think you are a bit loopy!! If you think the cat(s) involved are strays contact your local pet rescue place and see if they can catch them up - un-neutered male cats are far more likely to fight too so if they are not done that may help if they are then neutered. Hard again to persuade an owner to do this if not already done - they will probably tell you it is none of your business sadly.

If your cat thinks the infections are already a symptom on FIV I am not so sure why they are waiting 60days to check though? Yes, it will take time for antibodies to be formed so a recent infection may not give a correct result, but if already supposidley symptomatic then a test now should be relatively accurate....and they can always re-test later of course anyway. The other thing to remember is even a negative result in 60 days does not mean no chance of infection later on. A fight tomorrow could transmit this on to your cat if the attacker were to be FIV positive himself. Sadly there is no vaccine for FIV so short of keeping your cat in there is not a 100% safe answer here. Certainly in the UK we will see a handful of positive cases each year in the clinic - so statistically there is only a lowish chance of an attacker being positive, but there is always chance sadly.

Good luck - hopefully things will turn out negative and you can relax a bit more.

excuse the typos in the above! Think you can work out the correct words!!

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply beautifulgirls . You have been so informative ...
I thought FIV was different to Feline Aids but I see now that it is the cat version of HIV isn't it?
She is well in herself between infections but she seems to have them such a lot (4 times in a year is a lot of antibiotics isn't it? My children don't even have antibiotics once a year ... do other people's cats have to keep going to the vet a lot?)
She had a bad abscess in her leg which needed surgery, a huge hole in her side which got an abscess in it, the bizarre high temp and peeing incident and now this huge abscess in her tummy. She has a drain in it so she can't even roam around the house (it is oozing yukky stuff) and spent the night scratching the laundry door down [knackered]
It would be awful to keep her in from now on - she is such an outdoor cat ... she only comes in in the day time to sleep ... she is out all the rest of the time. I feel sad because we lived on a much bigger property in NZ where she had freedom and not many other cats around and was Queen of her space and then we moved to Australia to a city suburb where she is being beaten up by bastard neighboorhood toms
Poor thing.
This is a really really stupid question but ... presumably FIV is species specific????
She is only 2. Very young to be 'managing' this condition for the next 10 years ...

FIV is currently thought to be species specific yes - though affects big cats as well as our domestic moggies. Not known to be a risk to us. I honestly don't know if Australia has FeLV there though so that you would need to ask your vet about. Australia is lucky and is minus a few diseases we see so with any luck that is not a concern to you.

Hmm, she does seem to have suffered badly with her abscesses yes - but it still does not mean for sure this is FIV related. Often the other cat involved in a fight is a repeat offender. If he has a particularly unhealthy mouth with and carries "bad bugs" in there then most cats he bites are going to get bad reactions to it. It could explain why things have been this bad for her if she is not FIV positive.

4 times a year for antibiotics - we see a few like this over here yes. It is not such a problem if the conditions are sorted out with the doses given.Giving lots of antibiotics is discouraged to minimise the chances of resistant bugs, but in terms of health they should be thought of as good things when used correctly - which it sounds like they have been for your cat.

Hope it all works out ok - let us know how the tests go for her. Consider asking the vet to test now to save the waiting too. You can always test again later if they are still concerned about things.

Not a vet but have a cat who is FIV +ve (and have recently lost his sister to a tumour which was probably FIV related) and just wanted to offer a little bit of reassurance based on our experience.

Our cat has had patches like you describe for a while after moving - but once we settled in a place for long enough for him to reach his accommodation with the neighbouring top cats he was much better. Now he hasn't been ill for a couple of years.

On the other hand, do keep an eye for tumours. Our other cat had a lump which we thought initially was an abscess. In fact it was a sarcoma (?) and she died during surgery to remove it. Maybe we could have caught it a bit earlier if we had been aware that it was a high risk and had known to check her more carefully...

Thanks ib ... so sorry about your other cat
DC (Dear Cat ) has just spent a poor miserable day locked in the laundry . She is oozing yukky stuff still and I can't have her oozing all over the house. I have been in there every so often to give her a cuddle and clean up all the yukky stuff [pukey]. I made a lovely comfy bed for her to sleep on from 3 towels and a folded up duvet cover and for some reason she seems to be sleeping in the sink . She really is a nutty cat ... I think she is a dog in disguise really (the crap fighting and lacking in agility but also because she growls when people come to the door )
beautifulgirls, I am sure I saw a leaflet about FeLV at the vet yesterday ... so I am sure they have it here.
Thanks for your help guys, I really appreciate it ...