It’s a major health risk for the outdoor cat, so owners need to have their cats tested for feline immunodeficiency virus.

By Tom Ewing

If your cat is an unneutered male who likes to spend his time outdoors brawling with other cats (and you, the owner, do nothing to discourage this behavior), your animal is at especially high risk for infection with the feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV). This submicroscopic organism can weaken the animal’s immune system and, in time, make him vulnerable to a host of opportunistic diseases.

This pernicious virus thrives mainly, though not exclusively, in a cat’s saliva, and deep bite wounds are the primary mode of its transmission from an infected to an uninfected animal, according to James Richards, DVM, director of Cornell University’s Feline Health Center. Feisty, free-roaming outdoor males…

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