Cat in Germany has avian influenza (bird flu)

German officials on Tuesday said that a cat has tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu. This is the first time that an animal, other than a bird, has been infected with the bird flu virus in central Europe.

Health officials have been warning cat owners to keep their pets indoors after the dead cat was discovered over the weekend on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen. This is the area where most of the more than 100 wild birds infected by the H5N1 strain of bird flu have been found.

Thomas Mettenleiter, head of Germany’s Friedrich Loeffler Institute, said that the cat is believed to have caught the virus after eating a dead bird in the region. This belief comes from a pattern of bird flu transmission seen in wild cats in Asia.

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