Bird flu kills more than half the big cats at a Washington sanctuary

(CNN) — Bird flu has been on the rise in Washington state and one sanctuary was hit hard: 20 big cats – more than half of the facility’s population – died over the course of weeks.

The Wild Felid Advocacy Center of Washington announced the deaths Friday on Facebook. The nonprofit sanctuary is in Shelton, about 22 miles northwest of Olympia.

“It’s been one big nightmare. I never thought something like this would happen to us,” the center’s director and cofounder Mark Mathews told CNN affiliate KOMO. “Maybe only in a facility that had cats near each other, and ours are spread out over five acres.”

It is currently unknown exactly how the big cats contracted bird flu, but Mathews said the first death occurred around Thanksgiving.

The 20 animals that died include: five African Servals, four bobcats, four cougars, two Canada Lynxes, one Amur-Bengal tiger mix and other species of big cats.

“Tabbi, she was my favorite tiger,” Mathews told KOMO. “Before Thanksgiving, we had 37 cats. Today, we have 17 cats, (including) four recovering.”

The sanctuary is under quarantine and closed to the public to prevent further spread of the bird flu, it said in a statement. The center said it is working with federal and state animal health officials, disinfecting each enclosure and working with veterinarians on “prevention strategies while they oversee treatment to protect animal welfare.”

The sanctuary hopes to reopen in the new year, according to the center’s website.

While it is unknown how the big cats contracted the bird flu, the sanctuary said it “spreads primarily through respiratory secretions and bird-to-bird contact and can also be contracted by carnivorous mammals that ingest birds or other products,” the center said in its statement.

Cats are particularly vulnerable to bird flu, which can cause subtle initial symptoms that may “progress rapidly, often resulting in death within 24 hours due to pneumonia-like conditions,” the center said. Symptoms include low energy, swelling of body parts, lack of coordination and diarrhea in pet birds, while cats and dogs may experience a fever, lethargy and low appetite, among other symptoms, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.

“Usually, when a vet comes out and they do immobilization, they start to feel better, and with Harley (the cougar), it was different because he made it pretty obvious he wasn’t feeling better after his treatment,” sanctuary employee Jolie Connolly-Poe told KOMO.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife reported earlier this month bird flu cases have been on the uptick across the state. It also confirmed two cougars contracted bird flu in another part of the state.

“(I’m) feeling devastated, kind of in shock. It just feels terrible that you take such good care of them, and then something unforeseen takes its toll real fast,” Connolly-Poe said. The center is “just taking good care of those recovering.”

In the 20 years since the sanctuary opened, Mathews told KOMO there hasn’t been an instance like this before. The center is taking additional precautions to avoid a further spread of bird flu as they prepare to disinfect everything.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it’s “rare for people to be infected with bird flu viruses through contact with infected wild, stray, feral, or domestic mammals” but it is possible if there is “prolonged and unprotected exposure” to the sick animal.

There have been two instances of bird flu being passed to a human from mammals, according to the CDC: one in 2016 involving a cat and the other in 2024 involving a cow.

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