The Marion County Animal Services shelter has temporarily suspended cat and kitten intakes and adoptions due to an unusually high spread of Feline Panleukopenia virus, or “panleuk.”
According to director Kyra Lynch, the shelter commonly gets a few cases of panleuk every kitten season during the spring and summer due to the high volume of sick and vulnerable cats coming through their system. But this year’s spread hit them hard and fast.
“The problem, especially in shelters, is that typically when kittens are here, they're not always at their strongest in the first place. So they usually missed a few meals, maybe they're missing mom,” she said. “And then they're impacted by this virus on top of it. And unfortunately it really targets the weak, which is our biggest struggle right now.”
Lynch said panleuk symptoms usually affect the gastrointestinal track of a cat, causing vomitting or diarrhea, which makes identifying cases easier. But this season, the most common symptom they’ve found is sudden death, or a cat being fine one day and quickly deteriorating the next. Lynch said a lot of their cases are also in foster homes, making for extremely tough situations.
“I think the biggest thing that we haven't been seeing is a lot of those pre-symptoms before they're crashing or passing away, which is devastating, especially for our foster families,” she said. “It's really hard on our staff too. Nobody wants that to happen, especially to the most vulnerable population we have here.”
Lynch said the shelter is encouraging anyone who needs shelter services to call ahead, because they still have some resources available like vaccinations. Additionally, anyone who finds a healthy cat or kitten can foster it at home until the shelter reopens, and the shelter can provide litter, food and other supplies.
“The biggest thing that we're trying to prevent right this moment is just bringing in especially healthy kittens, and potentially exposing them to this virus right now,” Lynch said.
For cat owners, Lynch said the standard FVRCP vaccine is effective against panleuk, so as long as household cats are up to date on their vaccines and are otherwise healthy, they should be able to fight off infection. She encourages anyone fostering a new cat or kitten to isolate it for at least two weeks to ensure the health of both the new cat and any household cats. Panleuk is also a feline-specific virus, meaning it can’t spread to dogs or humans. The shelter’s dog adoption and foster programs are running as normal.
“The other thing that we're just asking the community, especially during this time, [is] just some support and patience while we get through this. We are doing it in abundance of caution and we really are trying to aggressively get in front of it so we can stop it sooner rather than later,” Lynch said. “We don't want it impacting any more cats or kittens than we already have seen impacted by it.”
According to Marion County public relations manager Stacie Causey, the shelter has 418 cats in its care, 339 of which are in foster homes. She said the “best-case scenario” is the shelter reopening in about a week, but it may take longer to deep clean all the facilities and screen every cat for symptoms.