Another Cat Tests Positive for Bird Flu in Washington State as H5N1 Keeps Spreading
On January 27, 2026, the Washington State Department of Agriculture confirmed that an outdoor domestic cat in Grant County had tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1. The cat came into contact with a dead wild bird. Then the cat died.
This was not an anomaly. This was case number 150 in an ongoing national tally of domestic cats infected with H5N1 since the current outbreak began in 2022. One hundred and forty-nine cats before this one, across dozens of states, and the message still has not sunk in: outdoor cats are catching bird flu and dying at alarming rates.
How Cats Get Infected
The transmission routes are straightforward. Outdoor cats encounter infected wild birds — dead or alive — and the virus moves in. Barn cats on dairy farms drink raw milk from infected cows. Indoor cats eat commercially sold raw pet food contaminated with H5N1. In January 2025, the FDA found the virus in a brand of raw cat food after a cat in San Francisco got sick, tested positive, and was euthanized.
Dr. Amber Itle, Washington's state veterinarian, warned that migratory birds concentrate the virus in fields, backyards, and near water sources across the state. The Grant County cat was Washington's first confirmed feline case linked to wild bird contact, though four previous cats in the state had been infected through raw pet food.
Symptoms and Mortality
Infected cats develop fever, loss of appetite, and lethargy — symptoms that worsen rapidly into coughing, respiratory distress, nasal discharge, and neurological signs including incoordination, tremors, seizures, and blindness. The fatality rate is up to 70 percent. There is no vaccine. There is no cure. Treatment is limited to supportive care, and most cats do not survive.
The Irony
Every veterinary authority, every public health agency, every organization that has weighed in on H5N1 in cats says the same thing: keep your cats indoors. The CDC says it. The AVMA says it. Cornell's Feline Health Center says it. WSDA says it.
This is the same recommendation that wildlife biologists have been making for decades to protect birds from cat predation. The same recommendation that cat owners have been ignoring for decades because their cat "likes to go outside."
Cornell's Feline Health Center lays it out plainly: do not feed raw meat, do not feed raw milk, and do not let your cat roam outdoors where it can contact wildlife. Every single one of those warnings is a warning about letting cats do what millions of owners let them do every day.
Bird flu did not create the outdoor cat problem. It just made the consequences impossible to pretend away. Your outdoor cat is not just killing songbirds anymore. Now the songbirds are killing it back.