At the Humane Society of Macomb, our staff is always prepared to see and then fulfill the needs of the many dogs and cats that are brought into our care.
We immediately noticed the needs of Kali, a 4-week-old kitten that was brought to our shelter along with four littermates.
At Kali’s age, we knew how important it was to help her and her littermates begin the weaning process.
To make sure this happened, one of our staff members chose to foster Kali and her littermates.
With their support, Kali and her littermates were bottle-fed multiple times a day until they were weaned.
As a part of our normal intake process for cats and kittens, we tested Kali for Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV), which is, unfortunately, untreatable.
If you don’t fully understand how FIV affects cats, think of this virus as being like HIV in humans.
FIV weakens a cat’s immune system just as HIV impacts a person’s immune system.
You should also know that cats can be infected with the virus and not show any signs of the infection until years later.
If you give or seek proper medical care, cats who test positive for the infection can live for several months or years before the virus becomes chronic.
When we test cats and kittens for the virus, we usually use a blood test.
Please note that kittens can often show a false positive on a blood test for 4-6 months after birth.
We did a blood test on Kali, and she tested positive for antibodies against FIV.
In most kittens that test positive for FIV, it simply means the mother cat was infected with the virus, but the kittens are usually not infected.
In Kali’s case, her mother likely passed FIV antibodies to her during nursing.
After much care and fostering from our staff member, we were able to find Kali a furever home. Kali was adopted on September 21, 2018.
She was adopted with a medical waiver from us to retest her for FIV when she became of age.
When we retested Kali, we are happy to report that she tested negative for FIV.