Did you know that if a bird flu pandemic hits the UK your cats could well be the first ones to get the flu, as they are particularly susceptible to the virus. It is likely that the bird flu virus will first mutate into a form that will be easy for cats to get and then at a later date become dangerous to humans. In fact at a certain stage it may be possible for you to get bird flu from your cat and this could mean that like poultry in farms the UK will have to consider culling household cats!

The last major outbreak of bird flu that was called the Spanish flu that killed more people that the first and second world war together originally mutated to infect pigs and humans caught the virus from pigs.

Some scientists reckon that this new version of bird flu will become dangerous to humans through cats. Two other influenza pandemics that the world knows about namely the Asian flu of 1957 & the 1968 Hong Kong influenza were first transmuted through pigs.

So a word of warning to all cat owners…. keep your cats away from birds and pigs if a bird flu pandemic starts to infect either of them in the UK. Your best chance is to attempt to keep your cats indoors and look out for any symptoms of bird flu in them at all times.

A study that was recently completed by a University in Indonesia noted that when there was an outbreak of the H5N1 virus in birds there would also be a big number of dead cats in the area. In one outbreak all the cats in one house in Bangkok died and the local zoo that has tigers and leopards also succumbed to the virus. Closer to home in Germany 3 cats died from the flu after eating infected birds.