A Wairarapa vet who has had an onslaught of calls from cat owners worried about their felines catching bird flu says it is rare when cats get the H5 strain of the virus, but there is a high mortality rate.
It was confirmed on Friday that a native kāhu – or swamp harrier hawk – in the region was the country’s second confirmed case of the deadly H5 strain of the virus.
The Ministry for Primary Industries has increased monitoring and says there is no evidence of mass mortality in wildlife, and there has been no detection in poultry.
As bird flu reaches New Zealand, a dedicated team of volunteers is quietly walking kilometres of coastline searching for sick and dead birds. (Source: 1News)
Several countries that have had cases of the virus have also had domestic cat deaths due to the H5 strain.
Wairarapa vet Dr Louisa Broughton told RNZ cat owners in her area had been “pretty worried, understandably” about the situation.
She said they were asking if their cats needed to be kept indoors, and what they need to do to lower the risks to their cats.
Broughton said cats can catch bird flu, although cases were considered rare.
“Unfortunately, if they do get it, it can have a reasonably high mortality rate, so I understand peoples’ concerns about it.
“So we’ve mostly been communicating that it’s up to each individual cat owner as to how much prevention they want to do.
“Some people decide to make them indoor cats, or patio cats, that don’t go outside. And a lot of it is about trying to reduce the amount of time they are near sick or dead birds.”
The kāhu infection follows the country’s first case, confirmed earlier this week in a brown skua seabird found at Petone Beach. (Source: 1News)
She said the symptoms presented like many other respiratory symptoms, such as high fever, depression, lethargy and loss of appetite.
There was no vaccination to deal with infected cats, said Broughton.
“Treatment is very much symptomatic, so they might need intravenous fluids or help eating, those sort of things.”
But she said, if a cat was showing those symptoms, it was “probably not going to be bird flu”.
“There’s other things that can present like that, but a lot of cats would need supportive treatment for those presentations anyway.”