r/AskVet•
tripodguy1

Do vets normally not check for feline herpes or leukemia in orphan kittens unless you specifically ask?

I have a 5 year old female cat and recently found an orphaned newborn kitten that I was bottle feeding. I live in a studio apartment, and was struggling to keep them separate after a few weeks. ( my older cat hates other cats, so she would stay away on her own… she was also a orphaned bottle baby I found )

This kitten had eye goop but had a smaller eye or squinted one eye specifically, I thought it was due to a scratch or something in it. I took her to a vet where they did fecal, deworm, flea and tick, etc. she was too young for any shots at the time.

I thought my older cat was up to date on her vaccinations, but I messed up and wrote the wrong year so she was behind a year. I can’t remember off the top of my head on which. I’m struggling financially so I was trying to get the kitten immediate help because I could not find anyone to take her.

I specifically asked the vet to check for FeLV because of close proximity to my adult cat. I had been keeping her in a travel crate in my bathroom.

I didn’t know about the feline herpes virus at the time, so I didn’t ask for it. My vet told me “if they don’t call, everything is good to go” and I told them about my other cat so I said please if something is wrong call me immediately so I can get it figured out. (Didn’t know about my adult being behind at the time) figured out a couple days after. Felt terrible.

So they did call me the next day, and I missed it and called back 10 mins later and they said the vet would call me to talk again in a few minutes. She never did, so I kept calling and was flipping out inside and she was always busy, then the next days office was closed and then she was off every day after, so I sat there for a week waiting. I was extremely pissed because no one would just relay the results to me and I felt so bad

Then she called and said alls good, and I’m like ??????? Okay great

Now I’m nervous she didn’t test for everything, my cousin said goop eyes are probably cat herpes bc she just had to go through that whole thing with a kitten she recently adopted

So, would I have had to specifically request this to be done or should it have been included in the all good results? I told her I wanted her to test for everything but I don’t remember her mentioning that test. All I know was leukemia test was negative.

Posted Jul 11, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

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