More than half of cats died after drinking raw milk from bird flu-infected cows

More than half of cats around the first Texas dairy farm to test positive for bird flu this spring died after drinking raw milk from the infected cows, scientists reported this week, offering a window into a toll the virus has taken during its unprecedented spread through the cattle industry.

The report, published Tuesday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, chronicles the early investigation by veterinarians and academic laboratories into a disease that started spreading through cows across the region earlier this year.

Cats at the Texas farm had been fed raw milk from cows that turned out to be infected with  highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI H5N1. A day after the farm first started noticing cows were getting sick, the cats started getting sick too. By the end, more than half of the cats had died.