I volunteer at a shelter in rural Ohio. Despite our best efforts and many low cost/free spay/neuter programs an average of 500 cats get dumped here every week from March through October. We're out in the sticks, and our adoption numbers reflect that. A week with 25 adoptions is huge for us. Our charter with the town does not allow us to refuse any cats brought in, we even have a drop-off area set up where people can leave them. (This beats finding them frozen stiff in winter or microwaved in closed boxes in summer, at least.)
Anyway, given the 500 admissions vs. 25 adoptions per week, it's pretty easy to guess what happens to the other 475 cats. We've been working really hard to set up a foster program to save as many as possible - give them places to live while we do their shots, surgery, testing, flea control and deworming. Still, the number of lovely and adoptable cats and kittens we have to euthanize each day for simple lack of foster homes and shelter space is sickening.
Two weeks ago I happened to see a tiny tortie arm waving from the front of a carrier with a "Euth: No Foster" tag attached to it. Having a soft spot for anything of the tortie genre, I peered into the carrier to find a four week old tortie kitten and her pure white mommy. Next thing I knew, I was tip-toe-ing out the back door with the carrier, while our feline director rolled her eyes and predicted dire consequences for not following the rules.
This week Kitten was six weeks old, so I tried bringing them in through the foster program. I had had Mom FeLV/FIV tested before I brought them into my house, but to my amazement Kitten's FeLV test showed up a weak positive. Mom's test was again negative. They even pulled a second sample from Kitten and re-ran it with the same result.
I've seen positive moms with negative kittens, but never a nursing kitten who was positive while Mom was negative. I'm keeping them for a month, then re-testing. If Kitten is still positive she'll have to be euthanized. I'm just hoping they'll spare her mom, or that Kitten's test - which was weak - will turn negative.
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