Shelter cats with infection.

Dr. Marie replied:

I'm sorry to hear about the situation at the shelter. Things like this are very difficult to deal with. This certainly sounds like some type of respiratory virus. While most respiratory viruses in cats cause runny noses and sneezing, not all of them do.

It sounds like you are doing a good job of cleaning and disinfecting. However, respiratory viruses are airborne and no amount of cleaning will get your facility completely free of virus.

In order to rid the shelter of this virus you are going to need to find a way to completely isolate the sick cats from any newcomers. This means that they can't share air at all. Just putting them in a different room will not work unless you had a building that had sections with completely different ventilation which is not common.

I'm sure that there are shelter protocols already written for situations like this. I am not a shelter vet but I can give you a few ideas of things that could work. One possibility would be to find foster homes for all of the current cats that you have. Once all of the cats are gone from the facility then thoroughly scrub everything from top to bottom and leave the windows open so that the air is exchanging. Ideally it would be best to not take any new animals into the facility for two weeks. Then, at that point, if any of the foster cats are still at all sick then they do not come back into the facility.

I have seen some shelters when faced with chronic respiratory problems that they can't fix that will euthanize the animals that are currently there. This is so difficult to do but if no foster homes can be found then if there is no other solution then the shelter is going to keep on infecting every new animal that comes in and will never have healthy cats again.

Shelter medicine is so difficult. I really hope things go ok.

Dr. Marie.


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Dr. Marie replied:

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Usually when I see a cat cough like this I think of asthma. But, asthma is not going to be contagious from cat to cat.

I do not have much personal experience with kennel cough in cats as I haven't seen much of it in my area, but this is a possibility.

It's not a bad idea to consider testing some of the cats for heartworm. Heartworm is not as common in cats as in dogs, but it can happen, especially if you live in a Southern climate. Heartworm can cause cats to cough with a cough that sounds like asthma.

Dr. Marie.

Dr. Marie replied:

I think that these symptoms would be unlikely to be due to mold, although I must admit that I am not an expert on mold.