Bobcat

CARBONDALE — On the morning of Sunday, Sept. 4, Paige Williams lost her once-healthy one-year-old kitten, Louise, to bobcat fever.

The parasite is about one micron across, which is very tiny and takes up about 1/10 of a blood cell.” I wanted to do some research on it and see if we could get a better understanding of it,” Zieman said. “If you have both of those in high numbers, then the disease can be prevalent. “We have only had a 50/50 survival rate, even with the treatment,” she said. Marquiss said there are a lot of bobcats in the area. The tick population in Southern Illinois is very high. If cat owners catch the symptoms early enough, there is a treatment with a 60% success rate. She looked on TikTok, a popular social media platform, and talked to people whose cats had survived the disease. I have three cats and all of them are inside-outside cats,” she said. At the time, she didn’t think it was a liver-failing disease. The veterinarian thought at first the kitten was experiencing symptoms of anemia. Bobcat fever is a disease that’s found in bobcats but transferred to outdoor cats by lone-star ticks.