Timeframe for repeating FeLV test?

[profcat]

Our indoor cat Fozzie got our a broken screen and spent 19 horrible days hiding outside before he came back in. During that time, he got attacked by the one tom cat we have in our neighborhood (it's a pretty rural area, and we've got the other cat who is around fixed, but this guy had been impossible to trap). When Fozzie finally came inside, we took him right to the vet who found his white blood cell count was way up. She immediately thought he caught something (FeLV, FIP, etc.) and ran tests. Everything was negative. He's a long-haired cat, so she didn't see right away that he has a wound and abscess near his rear end. She assumes that explains the high WBC, as the rest of his bloodwork was fine. She drained and cleaned it and he is home now recovering.

But he is locked in the bathroom pending another negative FeLV test. That's the only room we can isolate him from our other cats in. We have 2 senior cats in kidney failure, so we don't want to take any chances. The vet says he'll have to be retested for FeLV in 4-6 weeks, but I can't find anywhere online that says it would need to be repeated so far long-off. He's absolutely miserable in the bathroom. He cries and cries. I've also not read much about false negatives, but more about false positives.

We are taking him back in this week to have stitches out and another CBC. If his white blood cell count is normal, do we let him out? Or should we wait longer for another negative FeLV test?

 

[Mamanyt1953]

While FeLV negative tests are usally very reliable, the problem comes when the cat was infected so close to the testing time that the virus was not yet present in sufficient amounts to register. FIV and FeLV FAQs.