So far there are no cases of cats infecting humans, but a new study published Tuesday warns the virus easily mutates in infected felines.
Health officials have identified at least five cases of domestic cats infected with H5 bird flu in California, and they’re warning of multiple vectors of transmission now that both outdoor and indoor cats have been infected.
Two cats were infected after drinking raw milk from a dairy farm in Fresno, California, according to the Los Angeles Department of Public Health. That’s also how a dozen barn cats died in April after drinking raw milk from infected cows on a Texas dairy farm, the CDC said.
But three other cats who tested positive for bird flu were indoor-only, lived in the same home, and did not consume raw milk, authorities said. They’re looking into the possibility that the felines were infected through raw meat or by hunting mice.
So now it’s not only confirmed that cats are vulnerable to highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI H5N1, but that they can be infected in different ways.
To be clear, it’s not a cause for panic and it doesn’t mean people should isolate from their cats, but it does mean we should be smart and considerate when it comes to protecting our pets and reducing the possibility that they can be infected.
Because millions of felines live with humans, the fear is that they can pass the virus onto us. So far there have been no confirmed cases, but a study published on Tuesday confirmed that the virus can easily mutate in cats. That means the more domestic cats are infected, the greater chance the virus mutates in a way that allows it to “bridge” to humans.
At least two people — one in Wisconsin and one in Louisiana — have tested positive for the virus and were hospitalized this week. One worked on a farm and the other may have consumed raw milk. In the meantime, health officials are monitoring the people whose three cats were infected, and they’re urging people to take precautions.
“To avoid the spread of disease, including H5 bird flu, we strongly encourage residents and their pets to avoid raw dairy and undercooked meat products, limit contact with sick or dead animals, report sick or dead birds, and keep pets or poultry away from wild animals and birds,” said Dr. Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
The felines were found deceased near open tins of tuna, and laboratory tests confirmed they’d been poisoned.
In early October, a woman who helps manage a colony of stray cats in South Carolina’s Lowcountry stopped by to feed them and was distraught by what she saw.
Six cats lay dead not far from several open tins of tuna. After the woman called for help and a larger group searched the area, they found the bodies of seven more cats and three opossums, the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office said.
The cats were spayed/neutered and managed by volunteers from Lowcountry Trap, Neuter and Release Network, meaning their population was controlled and they were routinely monitored and given veterinary care.
Tests showed the cats were poisoned, according to the Professional Veterinary Pathology Services in Columbia and the Michigan State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.
While police were looking into the poisoning, they got a tip that a local man had been complaining about the cats and claiming they were a nuisance.
On Thursday, police charged 28-year-old Andrew Dock and 45-year-old Charles Waylon Ulmer with 13 counts of felony ill-treatment to animals with torture and one count of conspiracy. Dock’s wife, Sara Rose Dock, 23, and his mother, Laura Mary Dock, 61, were charged with conspiracy along with Michael Jeffrey Kemmerlin, 30. All five suspects live in or near Summerville, a town about 25 miles northwest of Charleston.
Each felony count is punishable by as many as five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, per South Carolina penal code.
Credit: Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office
Dock was the ringleader of the group, according to police, and enlisted the others to help him poison the cats.
“Anyone that is capable of putting out poison and creating that level of pain and suffering is a concern to me as a human in our community,” Carol Linville, founder of a local nonprofit called Pet Helpers, told Lowcountry news station WCSC. ”That is a dangerous person. If they can do it to a cat, they can do it to a dog or do anything else that they deem they don’t want around.”
Locals involved with colony management and animal rescue praised the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office for seeing the investigation through and arresting the suspects.
“The fact that the law enforcement took this seriously and really wanted to see justice and really do their due diligence to make sure that justice is really coming for these cats. I am, I’m very grateful,” said Kayte Williams, one of the women who cared for the colony. “Hopefully nothing like this happens again because the public will know if this happens, you will be prosecuted, you will be charged and you are not going to get away with it.”
Andrew and Sara Rose Dock. Credit: Facebook
On his social media accounts, Dock describes himself as a former welding instructor at Horry-Georgetown Technical College originally from Newark, New Jersey.
All five suspects were released after posting bond, according to the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office. It wasn’t immediately clear if they had retained lawyers, or if they were given return dates for preliminary hearings.
More Americans say they can’t afford to keep their cats because of inflation, leading to an increase in surrendered and dumped cats in some places.
More than 110 years ago, American geneticist Clarence Cook Little developed a theory explaining why some cats have orange coloring and some don’t.
Now Little has been proven correct thanks to the work of separate teams in Japan and the US, which discovered the mechanism that leads to orange coloring, including fully ginger felines as well as calicos and tortoiseshells.
The explanation may be a bit too heavy on genetics for some readers, but essentially the researchers found the specific gene that leads to the growth or orange fur. They’ve known about the gene for a long time, but didn’t realize the totality of its function. Its official name is ARHGAP36, but for the sake of simplicity, scientists are calling it “the orange gene.”
“The orange gene has a known role in hair follicle development, but scientists didn’t previously know it is also involved in pigment production,” a team of geneticists and biotechnologists wrote in The Conversation, a science publication. “This means that a new pathway for pigment production has been discovered, opening the way for exciting and important research into a basic biological process.”
In partially orange cats like calicos and tortoiseshells, the blotches of color are the result of imperfect gene copies and a secondary pigment-related gene switching “on and off.” Credit: Mehmet Guzel/Pexels
Ginger cats are usually male, but the pigmant can also appear in female cats due to an error in gene copying which deletes one segment of the orange pigment-producing genetic code.
That’s why calicos and tortoiseshells have orange blotches or mixed orange fur. “[T]he orange gene is persistently switched on in orange areas but is mostly switched off in non-orange areas of a cat’s coat,” the authors wrote.
Are there more strays in 2024?
Time magazine has a story examining the problem of stray cats in America’s urban and suburban population centers, why it’s happening, and what can be done about it.
First, might as well get this out of the way: We don’t know if there are “more” cats. The claim that there are more relies on anecdotes, and there’s no hard data to back that up. You have to be highly motivated to invest the time and money into a proper census like the D.C. Cat Count, and it’s an understatement to say most towns and cities are either not willing to do that, or don’t have the resources.
What we do know is there may be more cats in certain areas, with individual shelters in some places reporting record numbers of surrenders and cats scooped up by animal control.
Rescuers say people who can’t afford food, supplies and veterinary care are surrendering or dumping their cats in larger numbers than in years past. Credit: Dou011fu Tunce/Pexels
The story quotes rescuers who say they’ve seen more surrendered pets, as well as data from Shelter Animals Count, which tallies self-reported information from shelters and rescues. The latter says 32 percent of cats taken in were owner surrenders in 2024, compared to 30.5 percent in 2019.
“It’s a combination of people surrendering their pets and people not adopting because they’re not sure they can take on the financial commitment,” Animal Care Centers of NYC’s Katy Hansen told Time.
Rescuers say that’s reflected in their experiences trapping the felines, who are friendly and acclimated to humans.
The people surrendering their pets cite inflation, not only impacting the cost of essentials like food and litter, but also more expensive veterinary care.
The story additionally includes this eye-popping detail:
“At Veterinary Care Group, a private equity-owned practice in Brooklyn, the cost of spaying or neutering a cat has soared to $850 per animal. By contrast, at the nonprofit veterinary clinic Zweigart recently founded in Brooklyn, the cost of spaying or neutering a cat is $225 and a mid-sized dog is $300.”
The lesson here: Steer well clear of veterinary clinics that aren’t vet-owned or are obtuse about their ownership. Private equity groups don’t buy clinics out of love for animals.
The cost of spay/neuter procedures ranges dramatically at different veterinary practices. Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels
As for solutions to local spikes in stray populations, the story doesn’t offer any. It mentions TNR (trap, neuter, return) but only in the context of a lawsuit against the San Diego Humane Society for its neuter/vaccination program.
That said, there probably isn’t a one-size-fits-all technique. What works for a small town won’t necessarily work in a city, and there are dozens of factors that could influence the prevalence of stray cats and colonies. Still, city councils and town boards don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Chances are if they look, they’ll find a municipality similar to their own where locals have successfully stabilized feline populations.
As for the Buddies, I’d live in my car before giving Bud up. He wouldn’t be thrilled about that situation, and we’d have to head south because the winters here are brutal, but as long as Bud has his servant, he’s good.
A previous version of this post incorrectly described cat chromosomes. The story has been updated to remove the error.
Allexis Ferrell pleaded guilty to felony animal abuse, but she still hasn’t explained her actions.
A judge struggled to find words for his anger while handing down a sentence to an Ohio woman who ate a cat in front of her home this summer.
On the night of Aug. 16, 27-year-old Allexis Ferrell grabbed a stray cat and began eating it while it was still alive. Footage from freaked-out neighbors shows Ferrell on all fours in a driveway as she devoured the poor animal.
When horrified police officers arrived and asked Ferrell why she ate a cat, the woman — whose mouth was covered in blood — had no answer.
She still hasn’t explained her actions.
“This is repulsive to me. I mean, that anyone would do this to an animal. And an animal’s like a child. I don’t know if you understand that or not,” said Stark County Judge Frank Forchione. “I can’t express the disappointment, shock, disgust that this crime has brought to me.”
The judge says he considers Ferrell a threat to the community.
Shocked neighbors called the police when Ferrell attacked the cat.
On Monday, Forchione sentenced Ferrell to a year in prison, which she’ll serve in addition to 18 months’ prison time for two earlier cases involving theft and child endangerment. The one-year sentence is the maximum for felony animal cruelty in Ohio.
The incident made national headlines not only because it was vile, but also because the details weren’t made public until September — after then-candidate Donald Trump claimed immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets.
Unscrupulous social media influencers and clickbait “news” sites added to the confusion by initially tagging Ferrell as one of the pet-eating immigrants, despite Canton’s location some 170 miles northeast of Springfield. Ferrell is an American citizen and was born here.
Oddly, although follow-up stories reported Ferrell’s attorneys petitioned the judge for drug and alcohol abuse treatment for their client, there was no mention of Ferrell being under the influence of drugs or alcohol the night she killed the cat.
Here on PITB we’ve flagged stories that illustrate the disturbing normalization of violence toward cats and other animals, but this incident defies categorization. Hopefully Ferrell is given the help she needs and is prevented from ever owning or interacting with animals in the future.
Crumbs was rescued from a bad situation where people fed him without regard for his health. Now he’s got a lot of work ahead of him as his new caretakers help him lose weight so he can walk on his own again.
Crumbs, the morbidly obese tabby who was rescued from the basement of a Russian hospital last week, is already putting in the work to melt pounds.
That means he’s enduring two things most cats hate — exercise and water. You’ll recall from our earlier post that Crumbs weighs 38 pounds and cannot walk under his own power, so his new caretakers at Matroskin animal rescue in Perm, Russia, have him on a special waterproof treadmill where he gets the benefit of buoyancy while he gets his steps in.
The big guy is not a happy camper in the video, but he’s doing his best.
I’ve heard horror stories about the hospitals in Russia and Ukraine, so if it sounds strange that the staff at a hospital would feed cookies, soup and other inappropriate food to a cat, well, let’s just say it’s not the kind of environment most of us picture when we think “hospital.” (Which is another reason to be grateful for living in the west, where we have it much better than most of us generally realize.)
Non-native English speaking staff at the Hindustan Times may have confused Whiskas the cat food brand with whiskey, the alcoholic beverage, or there may have been a translation error.
Interestingly, a Hindustan Times story about Crumbs claims the hospital employees served whiskey to the obese cat in addition to the junk food, a claim repeated in the headline and article.
That would add another wrinkle to an already ridiculous story, but thankfully it’s not true. Your intrepid friends here at PITB checked the original text and with the help of translation software, determined it used the Russian word for “Whiskas,” as in the cat food, not whiskey. (It probably goes without saying, but never give alcohol to your cat. As little as a teaspoon of whiskey could be fatal.)
So if there’s some small comfort here, it’s that the people who fed Crumbs for so long weren’t completely ignorant to his needs, and it appears he got at least some species-appropriate food.
Crumbs shortly after he was rescued. Credit: Matroskin animal shelter
Pain In The Bud 