bringing in a new cat after loss of kitten to panleuk - will he be safe?

hi all, so as a scant few may remember, i came here about a month ago asking for advice on our situation with our kitten. we live in china and she was diagnosed with panleukopenia, and lamentably ended up succumbing to secondary infection after a week-long battle with the illness. i am kicking myself for buying a cat at an open market, and especially for getting a kitten. i got sucked in, and eventually paid for it. i know much better now.

my question is about bringing a new cat into the home. very shortly after our kitten passed, a friend of my fiance's informed us that a friend of hers discovered an abandoned cat in need of an owner, and because of what happened to us she wanted to ask us first if we'd like to take him in. strays and abandoned animals abound here, even in the big cities - we live in beijing and i see two or three every week in our neighborhood alone - as such, illness is much more common among unvaccinated pets here than it is back in the US, which i assume means that adoptable older cats have a greater likelihood of either already having been properly vaccinated before abandonment, or having been exposed to some viruses outdoors in the past and recovering.

the cat we want to take in has been vaccinated twice and cared for over the past month on our behalf by an extraordinarily kind old chinese woman (as i flat-out refused to bring him into our home until we knew for sure that he'd received the immunization(s) he'd need for panleuk). by this auntie's estimates, the cat is about a year old, but he almost looks older to me as he is ENORMOUS. not fat, just a very large breed of cat with a decent amount of meat on his bones. the auntie sends me photos and videos of him daily, and he's obviously extremely healthy and very playful. i believe he would be an excellent candidate for our home based on these factors, but of course after going through what we did with our last cat, i would dearly appreciate a second opinion from anyone who has more experience than we.

our previous cat did not throw up or have diarrhea anywhere but the floor, and i've disinfected all of our (exclusively wood and tile, no carpet) flooring with one part bleach to 20 parts water (and let it sit in each room for a minimum of 30 minutes). all of our last cat's belongings have soaked in bleach overnight, and we will be purchasing a new pet carrier and litterbox altogether for the new cat as the ones for our last kitty are too small anyway. our clothes and bedding and couch are all surely contaminated. i let kitten have free run of the house and as we don't have a dryer i'm sure everything we've washed since we first got her has the virus on it, though in what amount, i can't be sure.

if our new cat is strong and healthy, one year old, a good portion of the house has been disinfected, and he's been recently vaccinated against panleukopenia, is still he considered to be at higher-than-average risk of contracting the disease once introduced to our home? and again, it's entirely likely that he has either survived the virus or been vaccinated against it already given where we live. we did go to meet him once at the auntie's home, and i was almost too terrified to touch him because i worried i would pass the virus onto him from my clothes but the auntie (who btw currently owns three 20-year-old cats herself) insisted and assured me that he would be fine. i did hold him at one point, so he absolutely could have picked the virus up off of me. could i take that as a sign he was probably already immune, and should therefore be okay either way? if there is a significant chance he could come down with the virus after being exposed to it at our house, i will not adopt him. i cannot go through that again, and i refuse to inadvertently cause the death of another animal who could otherwise have had a happy life with another family. i would love to ask a vet about this and intend to ask a family member back home to call on my behalf for their suggestions - i do not quite trust the doctors here after the experience with my last cat, and will be asking around for vet recommendations from friends with any pets we adopt in the future for sure.

thanks in advance.

As long as you are CERTAIN he was vaccinated, he should be OK. We had that same dreaded disease move through our ferals, and it was heartbreaking to have the kittens die one by one, despite medical help and vaccinations which came too late. (they were too young to vaccinate normally.) I was panicked to think our house cats had been exposed, I was several months late on having them vaccinated with their boosters. Everything turned out fine, every one of the cats who were vaccinated lived, and even a few year old ferals lived through it too, but not without a struggle. The old ferals weren't affected, I think they had already been exposed.  Is there any way for you to check to see if he has had a full set of vaccinations and is now just receiving boosters? If he just needs boosters then he should be all right.  If you need to be really certain you could have his blood checked for a titer, which measures the concentration of the antibodys in his blood and can tell you if he is immune to the disease,  it would greatly rest your fears, but may be costly. I would say if you know for a fact he has been vaccinated, it would be fine to adopt him, both you and he need the happiness it would bring.All the luck!

thanks very much for the quick and thorough response - i have no way of knowing if he was vaccinated before being picked up off the street unfortunately, but i do know he was given one immunization for panleukopenia almost a month ago, and a second one almost two weeks ago, and we will be picking him up exactly two weeks after he received his last shot. i am thinking because this disease is so ubiquitous here and every chinese person i've mentioned it to is familiar with it, he must have either been previously vaccinated or exposed to it at some point anyway (but like i said i still wasn't willing to bet his life on a mere suspicion). thanks for helping to put my mind at ease, most sources seem to agree that so long as he is vaccinated properly he is as protected as he can be. i appreciate it

just wanted to update in case anyone else ever sees this thread - it's been a week since we brought kitty home and he's perfectly fine! it looks like the vaccine is a very reliable method of preventing distemper even in super contaminated areas.