FIV positive.

[smudgley]

Can I ask....Where did you get the 42% figure from for FeLV's being wrong?

[Booktigger]

Yes, an in house FIV test is very likely, but not 100%, and there is a chance that if this cat was tested through Glasgow that she would be negative, and surely you owe it to her to know 100%. FeLv has different stats completely, and this is part of the reason why

At what age should a cat be tested?
Cats and kittens can be tested from birth onwards. Cats should have two tests 12 weeks apart. If cats have only been recently infected, they may not yet have virus in their blood. The interval from getting infected to producing virus in the blood can be as little as two weeks or as long as eight weeks. For this reason, when cats are tested for the first time, it is recommended that they be tested twice, 12 weeks apart. A very small percentage of cats which are FeLV positive are in the process of developing immunity after which they will become negative; this is another reason for testing healthy cats twice. Cats which test positive twice at a 12 weeks interval will be permanently infected. In nature, many cats which are exposed to FeLV recover from the infection. Recovered cats have no FeLV p27 in their blood but may have antibodies to the virus. There is a test for these (virus neutralising) antibodies and it is important not to confuse this test with either the p27 or the virus isolation test.

Here is the table published by Glasgow after doing their survey

For interest, here are our results so far:

In-practice or other laboratory test
IFA FeLV positive
IFA FeLV negative
A
2
0
B
3
4
C
7
2
D
0
3
E
1
3
F
0
6
Total
13
18

As you can see, only 42% of samples which tested FeLV positive in-house or using other laboratory tests were positive by our confirmatory test.

Oops, that didn't come out well, here is the link to their page

http://www.gla.ac.uk/companion/

[smudgley]

Thanks for that I have looked at the website, interesting reading.

[Booktigger]

It is a very interesting site, and if you go on their notes for owners, some very informative articles on things like FIV, FeLV, Cat Flu, FIP. Well worth bookmarking, I refer to it loads.

[DiddyDawn]

Smudgley, 2 people on Cat Chat in the last few months have had positive test on an in house.......tests were resent to Glasgow after a little persuasion and both these cats were negative. If you decide to remove this poor babe from the area that she knows and loves, and from someone who obviously cares about her, don't you think you owe to her to find out for definite if she's FIV or not?

I for one would not trust an inhouse test......there is too much evidence saying that these tests can be wrong.

[logoes]

We didn't know that our ginger tom, who moved in on us,had FIV until we took him to the vet because he was obviously ill. His tests were positive and he was going downhill rapidly so we made the sad decision to have him PTS. He would have hated being kept in the whole time. He had lived with us for about 8 years, and all that time we had other cats with him and they never showed any signs of FIV asnd were all PTS for other reasons. Logoes