Ferret News

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One week, Rhonda Rebmann's niece had the flu. The next, her 10-year-old tabby cat started showing respiratory symptoms.

Pet owners who contract H1N1 flu may pass the disease along to their pets, especially if the pet is a cat or ferret.

Household pets could be at risk for the swine flu. In fact, nine ferrets in Douglas County contracted the H1N1 virus from their human owners.

A cat that died Nov. 7 is the first feline fatality from H1N1 flu, tests have confirmed.

Meet other parents of July 2010 kids and share parenting stories as your children grow.

Share + Nov 11, 2009 7:28 pm US/Mountain Reporting Mike Hooker If someone's pet is feeling a little under the weather, it might have swine flu.

For nearly six years, Debra and Keith Sadowski have been trying to maintain their ferret rescue operation in town, but a New Jersey Superior Court ruling threatens to undo all their efforts.

Hundreds of people around the U.S. have already contracted the H1N1 flu virus and now it appears our pets are at risk too.

Cats and kittens are being dumped in parks or by bins nearly every day, an animal welfare charity says.

Three more ferrets in Oregon have tested positive for the 2009 pandemic influenza H1N1 virus, state officials confirmed this afternoon, bringing the total number of cases affecting ferrets in the state to four.

Dr. Emilio DeBess, the Oregon state public health veterinarian, says the ferrets that tested positive for the H1N1 virus are among a group of nine ferrets that live with a family in the Roseburg, Ore., area. All nine ferrets, DeBess said, exhibited flu-like symptoms, but only three were taken to the veterinarian. Those three tested positive.

DeBess says members of the family that owns the ferrets were sick with flu-like symptoms the week prior to the animals becoming ill. He adds that there are no indications that the ferrets passed the virus on to people or any other species of animal.

The first ferret in Oregon confirmed with the 2009 pandemic influenza H1N1 virus was diagnosed in early October. All of the sick ferrets have recovered.

DeBess reminds pet owners that they should contact their veterinarian if their pets show any signs of illness, and that they should take precautions to help reduce the spread of influenza between themselves and their pets.

The fact that a single cat came down with the H1N1 is fascinating to scientists, veterinary infectious disease researchers and human virologists, but is this truly significant at all? Here's what happened: A 13-year old cat in Iowa that was acting lethargic, not eating and having trouble breathing was tested for H1N1 because two of the three people ...

More wet noses are turning up with the swine flu as local veterinarians are finding pets who've caught the bug from their owners.

Veterinarians caution people with flu-like symptoms to exercise caution when handling their pets now, as the virus is jumping species.

Oregon so far has four cases in which it's believed the pandemic influenza H1N1 passed from humans to ferrets — three of them from Douglas County.

Snoopy, one of nine ferrets belonging to Rice Hill resident Pauline Childers, started sniffling, sneezing and coughing in late October.

Then the other ferrets came down with the bug, said Childers' daughter, Jan Dermates.

So they called their veterinarian to figure out what they should do.

Alan Ross, owner of Companion Animal Clinic, had just read about a case in Portland in which a ferret tested positive for the flu and asked Childers to bring in the sickest three animals.

FIFI is a young ferret looking for a new home.

The six-month-old is a red-eyed albino, currently living with a group of ferrets. She should preferably be homed with an owner who already has ferrets, as they are communal animals.

Prospective owners who already have ferrets will be invited to the charity with their ferrets to mingle and ensure they will be friends.

FREMONT -- There's a pet boutique in town that offers everything from clothing and toys to food and treats.

PHOENIX -- What has been up until now considered exclusively a human health crisis, is now turning up in animals, after a cat and two ferrets were added to the list of H1N1 victims.

The cases are testing conventional wisdom, which held that humans could not spread the virus to animals.

"A lot of times, we'll see cats with respiratory symptoms, but we don't think of swine flu," said Dr. Jeff Jenkins, with the Ahwatukee Animal Care Hospital. "It's hard to say what the significance is. Is this a one-time occurrence, or is this something that's going to be a problem down the road?"

Jenkins said there is no reliable way to test cats for swine flu, and that the vaccine was made for humans, so it wouldn't work for animals.

More ferrets in Oregon have developed swine flu from their owners, fueling worries that the virus could jump from the pets to people.

“We are advising vets to take care because of the possibility of animal to human transmission,” said Emilio DeBess, the state public health veterinarian.

So far, the virus has only gone one way — from owners to their ferrets.

In early October, the first case of human to ferret transmission of the H1N1 virus was documented by DeBess in the Portland area. Then at the end of last month, nine ferrets owned by a family in Roseburg came down with flulike symptoms, he said.

That was a week after two kids in the Roseburg family — a teenager and a child younger than 10 — got sick with the swine flu.

Like the kids, the ferrets developed high fevers, red eyes, runny noses and they were coughing and sneezing.

“If the ferrets could talk, they’d say ‘Oh my God, my body aches,’” DeBess said.

Tests on three of the ferrets confirmed that they had the H1N1 virus. DeBess suspects that the others had the virus as well.

Ferrets, which mimic human flu symptoms, are used in labs researching the flu. DeBess said ferrets are especially susceptible to catching pneumonia.

A pet ferret in Nebraska that caught the H1N1 virus from its family died, and a cat in Iowa has come down with the virus, said Michael San Filippo, spokesman for the American Veterinary Medical Association.

H1N1 in humans is nothing new, but cases have popped up in pets right here in central Nebraska and in Iowa.

A 13-year-old house cat in Iowa that contracted the H1N1 flu from its owners is recovering.

A warning for pet owners after U.S. health officials now confirm H1N1 is moving from humans to household pets.