SUMMARY Ten cases of leukemia and 4 cases of infectious peritonitis occurred in a household with 35 cats during a 30-month period. None of the leukemic cats was known to be related. The clinical disease in leukemic cats was characterized by fever, progressive anemia, and later by malignant cells of varying type in their blood. The leukemia in each cat was classified histologically as malignant lymphoma, reticulum-cell type. It was concluded that these data support the theory of horizontal transmission of leukemia in cats. Two cats with infectious peritonitis developed abdominal fluid early in the course of illness and 2 others had early clinical signs similar to those seen in the leukemic cats before developing characteristic abdominal fluid.
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Cotter et al. (1973) studied this question.