Feline Herpesvirus

[contentuser]

Overview

Feline rhinotracheitis virus (feline herpesvirus type 1 or FHV-1) causes acute respiratory illness known as rhinotracheitis (or feline herpesvirus infection). The virus affects domestic and wild cats worldwide.



Rhinotracheitis is characterized by respiratory symptoms such as sneezing, nasal discharge, rhinitis (inflammation of the nose), and conjunctivitis (inflammation of the membrane lining the eyelid). It also affects the reproductive tract and can cause complications...Read the full article

[kittylyn36]

feline herpesvirus infection, which my youngest cat Simba suffers from. He was dumped in a trash bag in my back yard, lucky for him my children saw the bag move. Anyway, we have 2 other cats (female 13+ yrs and male 2 yrs) who have been near this kitten everyday. we were told that Simba would not make the others sick, it has been 4 months now and I have to say the other cats have been fine. if I read this information correctly Simba should be getting better, we put drops and ointment in his eyes every day as we were told to do, he also has L-Lysine HCI nutritional supplement given each day as advised by Vet. Simba still has the same symptoms as he did when we found him.

[Shallie]

Sincere thanks for the excellent information and advice provided in this article! I have a Siamese kitten that's fallen ill with this in the past week (Vet diagnosed) and we have been growing increasingly concerned about her well-being. This article describes in detail what's been happening and so is a great help and reassurance that we're on the right track with our programme of care. The advice contained in here has helped to give us some peace of mind today, so thank you again.

[jmmva]

My cat Maple is a torby (half tabby, half tortoise shell) and she's a smaller cat, looks sort of like a kitten, even though she's 7 now. Anyways, in 2006, she got a problem with her eye which wouldn't stop dripping. At first I thought nothing of it, but then it was obvious it was hurting her. We took her to the SPCA in San Francisco where they gave us eye drops. They thought maybe she just got scratched by another cat in the eye. When the eye drops didn't work, we went back, and they prescribed other drops which didn't work, then they recommended us to go to Veterinary Visions in the south bay. This was about 3 months after we noticed her eye problem. ...They put some flourescant drops into Maple's eyes and looked at her in the dark through special microscopic glasses, and then told us she had feline herpes and would need to take an eye salve instead of drops, and to have L-lycine powder in her food, to help her immune system. We did the salve 3 times + the L-lycine in the food for a few weeks, and it finally went away.

They told us that it might recur, just like in human herpes, if she was ever stressed out, or if her immune system was lowered again or if she ever stressed out. Apparently Maple had been carrying the virus, be it dormant, for as long as I'd had her. And it's fairly common in kittens you get from kennels. We got her from the SPCA, but she had a small and unpleasant history, when I got her when she was 1 year old. She was so small, and apparently she had had kittens when she was a kitten herself. That could have also been when she was infected with it.

Anyways we moved to Denmark from San Francisco,in 2008, and there were no reoccurrances of the Herpes (even during the somewhat strenuous and stressful move) until this summer when we went on vacation and left her at home for a month. She had a catsitter, and we assumed she'd be fine. But when we came back, she was so much more affectionate and "needy" than usual. We thought she just missed us. But then we noticed an eye infection, and that she'd been scratching herself pretty badly above her eyes, in front of her ears, there were bloody sores, and her eyes were inflamed and swollen. We took her to the vet, and were told that she has chlamidia. So we have to give her pills for that, and put an eye salve, again.

While examining her and informing me how to give the pills, I saw into Maple's mouth that she was missing a tooth, one of her lower pointy vampire like corner teeth was missing. The vet seemed to think it happened a while ago, and no big deal. But we've been gone a month, and it wasn't like that when we left. It had to have happened while we were gone on vacation.

...I can't help but wonder what happened with Maple when we were gone. How did she get chlamidia? She has been an indoor cat ever since we moved here a year ago. I thought Herpes was enough. But now we're learning she has both? No one ever did a blood test or a culture of the bacteria, so how do I know whose diagnoses is right? I guess I just have to trust our current vet and go with the medication for chlamidia even though the last vet we had told us it was feline herpes.

But it's not normal for an adult cat to lose teeth is it? I'm thinking maybe one of the kids who catsat her played too roughly with her and accidentally yanked a tooth out, by pulling too hard on a string or one of her cat-toys. But no one's come forward about it. ...could the tooth have fallen out just as a side effect of the infection in the eye? Cats' faces are so small and everything seems so close together. Maybe her mouth got infected too, and she lost a tooth that way? She had good teeth before. No problems whatsoever. And now we come home from vacation and there's all of this!

...I just feel so terrible we left her for so long, and she didn't do so well with it. The vet recommended now that we avoid leaving her for longer than a week alone in the house, even if there is a catsitter coming to feed her and clean up her litter. It's not enough. So now we know that if we were to go away for longer, to take her to a cat kennel. We just had been hearing so many very bad things about those cat kennels, and cats coming home with other cats' diseases or the flue, or what have you, that's why why we cringed at the idea. It has to be a cat kennel where each cat has a room of its own, and is in no way in contact with other cats, or become stressed. But alas, now we're kicking ourselves, and hoping Maple will make a full recovery.