kennel cough?

Ok, this is a bit of a strange one... Some time ago I adopted a puppy from a shelter who was very ill with kennel cough. Soon afterwards 4 of my 5 cats became ill with a respiratory infection, quite bad but eventually cleared up without treatment. At the time I was told unequivocally that cats cannot catch Bordetella.

Now it's about 5 months later, the dog has runny eyes but isn't too sick (he's had the KC vaccine), the same 4 cats have been sneezing with runny eyes and have been quite miserable (all vacc against cat flu), and about a week later my 10 year old son has come down with quite a severe respiratory infection, with high temp - clearing up now that he's on antibiotics. It just seems such a co-incidence that everyone had URIs at the same time... (I'm just starting to come down with it). Am I going mad, or could we all have Kennel cough?

AFAIK cats *can* get Bortadella:

http://www.felinebb.info/index.asp?lan=auto391981922

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bordetella_bronchiseptica

I also saw an account from a breeder but can't remember their prefix so can't find it.

Suspect your son was co-incidence though.

thanks, I guess at least it's better than a virus since if they get bad I can get them antibiotics. Is there any way to boost their immune systems? it's always the same cats that get sick out of my lot.

One of our cats gets URI's very easily, especially in the Spring as he has bad allergies. This is the first year we've put him on L-lysine for the allergy season and it has helped. He's had no full blown URI this year and when he starts having runny eyes or sneezing, we start him back on it pretty quick. Just this last week he was sneezing, alot, so we started mixing it in again and within 1.5 days, the sneezing minimized and now at 4 days, he's not sneezing at all. I think the medicine gives his immune system the bump it needs to fend off the infection.

As far as cats getting bordetella, I've not heard of that but evidently it is possible. We adopted a kitten many years ago that turned out to have ringworm. We were assured that it couldn't transfer to the dogs, however, our small dog did get it. And then we were told, unequivocally that it could not transfer to humans, well, it did. That was a huge mess, let me tell you.

I'd get the L-lysine and give it a try, it def. can't hurt.