Adopt an FIV neg kitten from an FIV pos mother

Currently I am in search of a little brother or sister for my four and a half month old kitten, Teddy. I found a kitten through a rescue group, however they informed me that the mother was HIV positive. All of the kittens were tested and he was the only one that came back negative. They think he remained negative because he had an eye infection and was taken away earlier from the mother to be treated. His eye infection has cleared up, but the lady said one of his eyes were still cloudy.

... so basically I am a little worried. Is it possible for this new kitten to develop HIV later in life? Do you think he has lost some of his eyesight due to the infection? And most importantly, is there any risk AT ALL that something could be passed to my Teddy?


Thank you for any insight!

I have 1 FIV positive cat and 1 FIV negative cat. They were both adopted on the same day, we knew Major Tom was FIV positive at the time, and we knew Randy was FIV negative. FIV is contracted through intercourse or through deep, muscle penetrating bite. I was assured that a small scratch would not transmit the disease, indeed the shelter had my FIV pos cat in with the general population, because he was not a fighter, and therefor the other cats were not at risk of contracting FIV from him. It is not passed by sharing a dish, by grooming each other, or by sharing a litter box.

I am pretty sure that a false positive is MUCH more likely than a false negative when testing for FIV. Any cat who has been immunized against FIV is going to test positive, even though they do not *have* FIV. I doubt the kitten will "develop" the disease later in life, unless he is deeply bitten by a cat who has it.

If you do take this new kitten, you need a vet visit asap, as you want to keep on top of his eye issue.

a lot of the time, kittens born to an FIV positive mother will test positive at an early age and then retest negative later, it very well could be that your kitty did not get the anti-bodies rom his mother because he was separated early.

Smirkitty had some great info, FIV is very very hard to spread between neutered cats. Most educated folks believe that there is no issue in having positives and negative living together.

One word of caution...most vets are not as up-to-date on FIV (and FeLV, but that's another matter) as they *should* be. Any advice your vet gives you, I urge you to reseach it on your own.

I wish you lots of as you try to provide a friend for Teddy.

The only reason, really, that I am adopting a purebred pedigree kitten from a breeder is that I love Kitty so much I can't stand the chance she could catch something contagious from anothe rescue kitten. Please be careful. i know what you are doing is important and loving, but people I know have lost cats over it too. please test whatever kitten you get extensivly and quarantine them.

I have no info on HIV or FIv but some on feline herpes and it can be devastating.

I second Katie's advice.

i hope every thing works out

i adopted chloe at 5 mos and chloes mom and brother were both fiv+ but she was not. they were all kept in the garage together, too. i was told half the litter had been pos and half hadnt. i dont know how it happened or anything because i dont know anything about fiv. however, they were the only 3 left

i had her retested at 2yrs old and she was still negative. she is almost 4 yrs old (next month) and still negative. BUT the vet told me if she was still neg at 2, then she would be neg the rest of her life, tho.

hope this helps

You probably have no need to worry about him coming up positive. The tests are a lot more unreliable though when the kittens are younger. The shelter I work for actually only does the Felv testing when they are kittens. The reason is to save money but also because all of our research showed us that almost all kittens that tested positive for FIV came up negative three months later. There was actually only 2 kittens that didnt!! pretty amazing huh? I wonder if that means that most cats with it have caught it while living outdoors....it certainly seems that way.

My third cat that I decided to adopt had been FELV positive several times. We had to fight the shelter to keep him around....he was just the sweetest guy ever. Thankfully at about 8months old he tested negative!! Ive taken him to be retested several times and hes been negative since

I would say if your kitten ever did get it again it would probably have to be recontracted from another positive cat

Thank you to everyone who responded! I ended up finding another kitten who had a clean bill of health and was much closer. (The original kitten I was looking at was 40 minutes away) I finalized the adoption papers and my new little one will be coming home on Wednesday after he is neutered. I can't wait!