SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash. — The staff at Cat Tales Wildlife Center is well-versed in precautionary practices to keep viruses from sweeping through their animals.
Those safety measures are being reinforced after 20 big cats died from bird flu at a wildlife sanctuary in Western Washington.
Bird flu is particularly deadly for large cats. Wildlife experts say the virus causes pneumonia-like symptoms and can lead to death within 24 hours of infection for many felines.
“The day before Thanksgiving, we had 37 cats,” Wild Felid Advocacy Center’s Mark Mathews told KOMO News. “Today, we have 17 cats, four recovering.”
That news made waves across the country; a devastating loss for other conservation centers like Cat Tales Wildlife Center.
“That’s a catastrophic loss,” said Lisa Grey, the executive director of Cat Tales. “To lose so many animals that quickly.”
Grey says the entire staff at Cat Tales is trained to mitigate the risk of exposing animals to viruses, like bird flu. For years now, the center has taken extraordinary efforts to keep these viruses at bay. One way this is done is by sanitizing the enclosures multiple times a week.
“Each staff has a backpack that has a pouch with a sprayer that holds sanitizer. And it can kill parvo,” Grey said. “We use that to clean our tools and our hands between exhibits so we don’t spread things between animals.”
Contaminated food is another avenue where these big felines can contract illnesses. Grey said the cats are fed human-grade mean, which is regulated by the USDA. This is an expensive but effective tactic to widen their safety net.
“We feed human consumable, restaurant quality feed to our animals because we don’t want to have that added concern,” Grey said. “Never been more glad to spend that money.”
This incident on the west side of the state isn’t prompting any changes at Cat Tales but rather reaffirming its approach of extreme caution as bird flu continues to cause issues for wildlife across the country.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, since the bird flu outbreak began, more than 900 herds of cattle in 16 states, including Idaho, have tested positive for the virus.
In Oregon, a house cat died after eating food that tested positive for the virus.
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