Feral turned Tame

[cruzn]

Oh my! I just took a quick look at your babies! Read a bit about the one that was crusted in milk.  Oh what a heart break!! I'd say good thing your husband didn't find the man.  GEEZ I would have kicked his butt too.

 

[whaler]

EWWW I feel a little ignorant now. :wife:  Uneducated vet?  Yes we don't put HIV positve people to sleep. My mistake. Thanks for the education anyway.  I didn't go through a TNR program. Although the group that I got the trap from initially with Iris does test. Geez I don't know if he was sick or not, I rarely saw him in the months I have been feeding the colony.
Lesson learned! Thanks!

sorry that you learned the hard way about this

vets in my area are, for the most part, somewhat lacking when it comes to understanding FIV, especially in regards to feral cats. keep in mind that FIV was first isolated by researchers in 1986.

just like LDG i have a FIV+ in my colony and other than trying to keep an extra close eye on her there is nothing special that i do. i also had a situation similar to yours earlier last year. i posted his story in a different thread but the short version is that the hospital that i brought him to wanted to kill him since he was positive. fortunately i have had some experience with this and he is thriving right now .

i was lucky that i was "taught" about tnr by my town's animal control officer - she is hugely supportive of tnr and even spends some of her free time trapping. she is quite willing to return a FIV+ to a colony as she understands what "the deal" is with FIV and thereby she helped me understand it.


as LDG already stated, testing is not the norm. how i have done it is that i test if; they are or they appear sick or if it is a mommie with kittens. other than that i have only had one healthy tested when he was trapped. i only did that since i wanted to be able to show that despite having a FIV+ in the colony there was no spread of it.