Woman looking for someone to adopt cat with feline AIDS

Laura Katz was the tender-hearted type of little girl who brought home the bird with the wounded wing, the puppy with the punctured paw and the homeless alley cat.

Adulthood sometimes steals a tender heart, but it never did for Katz.

In her Cape Girardeau home today, Katz, now 31, has four stray cats and three rescued dogs.

She still can't bring herself to turn away from even the smallest of God's creatures. She recently took a squirrel that had injured itself falling out of a tree to a local animal clinic.

"People can do for themselves, but animals can't," said Katz, who is sometimes teased because it sounds like she's named for the felines she loves.

So when her parents in Gautier, Miss., offered her another cat, she couldn't say no, even though she knew it would irritate her boyfriend and three other roommates who were already complaining of cramped space.

At the time, Katz didn't know the cat had feline AIDS. She only knew that the white cat with the blue eyes that were slightly crossed had been abandoned near Biloxi, Miss., by a family displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Katz brought home the cat and took it to Skyview Animal Clinic in Cape Girardeau to have its left ear treated for a gaping wound that the cat had apparently gotten during a fight with another cat.

Katz asked that it get a full work-up, to make sure it didn't have any other infections or problems that could be spread to her other animals.

A blood test revealed that the cat has feline immunodeficiency virus, or FIV, which is often referred to as feline AIDS. FIV, Katz learned, is a widespread viral infection that attacks the immune system of cats. It is caused by the same family of viruses that triggers AIDS in humans and has much the same devastating impacts on infected cats.

The virus devastates a cat's immune system, stopping it from effectively combating other diseases and infections, according to local veterinarian Dr. Cindy Sprigg. Infected cats can fall prey to a wide variety of secondary illnesses that can prove fatal, she said. This is no cure, but cats can live relatively long, healthy lives, if they are properly taken care of. Experts estimate that between 1 and 14 percent of the cat population is infected with FIV.

Unlike human AIDS, FIV is transmitted primarily through bite wounds because the virus lies dormant in the bone marrow. So it is mainly transmitted through saliva when two cats are fighting.

"It's really a mean cat's disease," Sprigg said.

But the virus is only spread from cat to cat. It's not transmitted to humans and it doesn't spread to other animals.

As long as colds and other illnesses are treated promptly, Sprigg said there is no reason someone couldn't take care of the cat.

"I wouldn't hesitate to own the cat," Sprigg said.

So Katz brought the cat back home, against the wishes of her roommates, who all would have preferred the cat be dropped off at the Humane Society, where it would likely have been killed.

"That was the majority opinion," said Katz, who is a nurse's aid at Southeast Missouri Hospital and a junior at Southeast Missouri State University studying to be a registered nurse. "I cried all day. I couldn't do it."

Katz pointed out to them that the cat was loving and didn't have a mean streak, so she was keeping it for now.

But Katz knew that she would eventually have to get rid of the cat. She didn't want to infect her other cats. She's been keeping it in a spare bathroom. She is hoping that someone will adopt it. Some people have expressed interest, but when they learn it has FIV, they lose interest quickly.

Her boyfriend asked people to adopt it on a local chat line, but the only response he got were AIDS jokes.

"People are so ignorant about it," Katz said.

Katz has had the cat for about a month. If no one adopts it, she plans to seek out a "no-kill" shelter and drive it there. She doesn't care how far away it is.

"People laugh about it," Katz said. "They don't understand it. But why shouldn't this cat have a chance to live?"

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137