Enzo – Special Needs – FeLV+

This is Enzo. He is about six years old and was found as a stray in Hartford. He is goofy, sweet, affectionate, playful, and always hungry- for both food and attention. This is the cat that reaches out to try and snag your sleeve if you look like you’re going to walk by without stopping to say hello. The best word to describe him is enthusiastic. He is eager for treats, toys, and human company.

Enzo has also tested positive for feline leukemia and has a skin condition. His skin issues are currently being successfully managed by medication. But there is sadly no medication that will resolve the feline leukemia.

Feline leukemia virus (FeLV) is a retrovirus belonging to the coronavirus subfamily, which means it is a cancer-causing virus. FeLV can cause severe anemia and suppress the immune system, leaving the cat vulnerable to a variety of opportunistic diseases. Cats with FeLV tend to succumb to the disease 1-3 years after transmission but some cats live much much longer. There’s simply no way to know if Enzo will live to be 7 or 17. We cannot predict the future.

Cats with. FeLV are usually pretty healthy until they aren’t. They don’t know they are sick and they live their lives with love and joy and no regrets. They are also often our most affectionate cats and kittens. We call them sprinters, and in the right home they can live and love just as fully as other cats- just not as long.

But finding them homes is terribly hard. Not everyone is up for the emotional challenge of taking home a cat that will likely not live a normal life span. And while FeLV is not transmissible to humans or dogs, it can be spread to other cats. So cats with FeLV should not live with FeLV negative cats.

We usually take in 1-4 cats or kittens a year who end up testing positive for FeLV. And we have amazing foster homes who help. But this year we have taken in a heartbreaking 17 cats and kittens who have tested positive. We don’t have enough foster homes for these cats and kittens and so far only two kittens have been adopted.

Which brings us to Enzo. Enzo has been living in the shelter so that we could get his skin condition under control. Now that it is being successfully managed we would like to send him to foster or potentially to a foster to adopt home. But we don’t have one. That means Enzo must remain in a condo full time. He cannot be out on the floor. He cannot even go into the BAR (behavior assessment room) unless all the cats are removed and a volunteer is able to stay in the room to make sure that he doesn’t interact with a cat who is in a condo in that room. This means that Enzo spends almost all of his time in a cage.

We hate that for him. It is terrible enough, that his life will likely be shorter than most. It is terrible enough that some portion of that time was spent outside trying to survive, and months more spent miserable and itchy while we tried to control his skin condition. That any more of his precious time should be wasted seems unbearably unfair.

But we won’t expose our other cats to this disease. So we are stuck. More importantly, Enzo is stuck. Unless and until we can find someone who is willing to foster him. So we are asking. We know this is a hard ask. We know that most of you will not be willing or able to do this. But we need to try.