“Domestic cats are actually very susceptible to avian flu, particularly H5N1,” says Kristen Coleman, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Maryland, “but we've recently seen a surge in infections in domestic cats. And it's really exponentially increasing.”
There have also been sporadic reports of infected dogs.
While bird flu infections in pets are rare overall, they can be severe, especially in cats. “It can cause very severe illness and often death,” says Dr. Coleman. “So it's a very serious issue and something that should be taken seriously.”
But by taking some “good precautions,” people can keep their pets safe, she said.
Here's what you need to know:
How do cats get bird flu?
The dairy farms were infected by cats that drank unpasteurized milk (also known as raw milk) from sick cows, which contained high amounts of the virus. More than 80% of the infected dairy farms had cats on the premises, and more than half reported sick or dead cats, according to federal data released Thursday.
But even before the recent dairy outbreak, there had been reports of cats being infected, some of which likely caught the virus when they ate infected birds. “The more wild bird carcasses there are, the more dead poultry there are, the more predators can get in there and ingest them even after they're dead, and they're ingesting a lot of the virus,” said Dr. Justin Brown, a wildlife veterinarian at Pennsylvania State University.
Several larger outbreaks have been linked to contaminated raw chicken: In 2023, for example, two cat shelters in Seoul were hit by bird flu outbreaks, after which government investigators found the virus in raw duck meat that had been fed to the cats.