On a February evening in 2025, two cats in a New York City apartment fell ill within days of each other. One had eaten raw chicken from a packet labeled lot 11152026, sold under the Savage Cat Food brand. The second had eaten nothing of the sort. It had simply shared a home with the first. Both cats developed fever, severe respiratory disease, and liver failure. Both died. The second cat's H5N1 infection was confirmed by the USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratories, the first documented case of fatal cat-to-cat H5N1 transmission inside a U.S. household [1].
That apartment is the household sequel to the dairy cattle story. The same H5N1 strain now moving through U.S. dairy herds, clade 2.3.4.4b, genotype B3.13, has begun showing up in the pet food bowl. Four raw pet food brands have been directly linked to fatal cat infections since December 2024. Indoor-only cats, with no exposure to raw milk, poultry barns, or wild birds, have died after eating contaminated frozen food. The case-fatality rate for H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b in cats sits at 89.6% [2]. This is not a rounding error. It is the most urgent consumer-facing food safety story for pet owners since the melamine recalls of 2007.
Four Brands, Twelve Months, One Strain
The contamination timeline is short and the brands are distinct. They should not be conflated.
Northwest Naturals, based in Oregon, issued the first recall in December 2024 after an indoor house cat died from H5N1 confirmed in both the animal and the food. The recalled product was the 2-pound Feline Turkey Recipe raw frozen pet food, distributed in a dozen U.S. states plus British Columbia. The recalled product itself tested positive for H5N1 at USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratories, the first time a U.S. raw pet food product had been directly tied to a cat's death [3].
In February 2025, the California Department of Food and Agriculture linked H5N1 infections in two cats from different households to Monarch Raw Pet Food, a raw chicken product sold at farmers' markets in California. Both cats developed severe illness and either died or were euthanized. Cat food samples were not available for testing in that investigation, but the epidemiological link was strong enough for state officials to flag the brand publicly [4].
Savage Cat Food, also marketed as Savage Pet and based in El Cajon, California, became the third brand in March 2025. The recalled chicken packets, lot 11152026, were distributed in California, Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Product samples themselves tested positive for H5N1, the first time a U.S. raw cat food product was both linked to household cat deaths and directly confirmed to contain the virus [5]. The NYC press release that named the brand also documented the household transmission event that opened this article [1].
Wild Coast Raw of Olympia, Washington, recalled its free-range chicken formula in April 2025 after cats in Oregon and Washington tested positive for H5N1 [6].
The pattern is not finished. In September 2025, Los Angeles County Public Health confirmed that two indoor-only cats from the same household died after eating a batch of commercially available raw food. The first cat became ill one to two weeks after ingestion and died. The second was euthanized after developing severe respiratory and neurologic signs. Genome sequencing of the virus from the second cat identified H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, genotype B3.13, the dairy cattle lineage [7]. USDA had reported 977 H5N1 detections in dairy cattle across 17 states by early March 2025 [8]. The food chain connecting those cattle to a kitchen counter in Los Angeles now runs through pet food.
The 89.6% Number
The fatality rate that matters right now is 89.6%, not the 70% figure often repeated in consumer media. The lower number comes from a 20-year systematic review of 607 PCR-confirmed feline avian influenza infections across 12 species and 18 countries. Pooled, 71.3% of those cases were fatal [2].
Pooled numbers hide the difference between strains. For H5N1 in general, the case-fatality rate in cats was 52.8% in that same review. For the specific clade currently moving through U.S. dairy cattle and pet food, H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, the case-fatality rate was 89.6% across 135 cases in five species, including domestic cats, reported in Finland, France, Poland, the United States, Italy, Peru, and South Korea [2]. The strain in a pet's bowl is not a generic avian flu. It is the dairy-adapted lineage, and cats hit by it are dying.
Cornell's veterinary diagnostic center has been one of the primary laboratories confirming these infections, including the Savage Cat Food case in New York and the Northwest Naturals case in Oregon. Cornell's guidance is blunt: cats are highly susceptible to H5N1, infection is typically severe, and the disease is often fatal [9]. Cornell recommends that cats not be fed raw poultry, raw meat, raw eggs, or unpasteurized milk, and that outdoor access be limited in outbreak areas [9].
The numbers are not abstract. USDA APHIS maintains a public dashboard of HPAI detections in mammals, including domestic cats, and updates it as state and federal confirmations come in [10]. The H5N1 strain in dairy cattle is the same lineage identified in the September 2025 LA cluster [7][8]. The food safety question is no longer hypothetical.
Symptoms Owners Should Watch For
Cornell's clinical guidance lists the symptoms that should send a cat to a veterinarian immediately, and the list is worth keeping next to the food bowl. Fever, lethargy, and loss of appetite come first. Conjunctivitis and respiratory signs follow: sneezing, coughing, and difficulty breathing. Neurologic signs, including tremors, seizures, and incoordination, signal severe disease and are the reason several of the indoor-only cats in the documented cases were euthanized rather than treated [9][7].
One detail from the NYC investigation matters for multi-cat households. The second cat to die had not consumed the recalled raw food at all. It was exposed to the first sick cat in the same apartment [1]. If one cat in a multi-cat home is symptomatic, the others should be considered exposed. NYC Health, Cornell, and the FDA all recommend calling a veterinarian before bringing a symptomatic animal in for evaluation, both to alert the clinic and to allow staff to use appropriate personal protective equipment [1][9].
Vets who suspect H5N1 in a cat are expected to report to state public health authorities and to handle the animal with PPE [9]. The threshold for suspicion should be low for any cat that has eaten recalled raw food or raw milk, regardless of known exposure to infected animals or the outdoors. Dogs can also be infected with H5N1, though they are less commonly reported than cats, and the same clinical caution applies.
What the FDA Has Actually Done
The FDA's response to the pet food contamination events has been documented across multiple agency actions, even if no single headline directive captures them all. In March 2025, the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine published "FDA Outlines Ways to Reduce Risk of HPAI in Cats," a public guidance page that advised pet owners to avoid raw meat-based diets and raw milk for pets during the H5N1 outbreak and confirmed the agency was monitoring reports of H5N1 in cats in California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington that had consumed contaminated food products [11]. The NYC Health press release of the same month explicitly cited the FDA's monitoring as part of the active response [1].
Earlier, in February 2025, the FDA had issued a separate public warning after H5N1 was detected in a San Francisco house cat that had consumed raw cat food, urging pet owners in regions with active H5N1 outbreaks to avoid raw meat-based diets [12]. The agency has continued to issue updates through its Center for Veterinary Medicine page and has coordinated with USDA APHIS and state agriculture departments on the recalls [13]. The AVMA has updated its policy on raw pet food diets to cite the 2024-to-2025 H5N1 contamination events as a current example of the underlying risk [14].
The FDA has not imposed a blanket ban on raw pet food. What the agency has done is issue repeated advisories, support recalls of contaminated product, and document the case clusters in real time [11][12][13]. For pet owners, the practical effect is the same as a ban on feeding raw poultry products during an active outbreak: the agency's documented public guidance is unambiguous about the risk.
What to Feed Instead
The safer alternatives are not exotic, and they are not new. CDC recommends cooking poultry, eggs, and beef to a safe internal temperature and choosing pasteurized milk to kill bacteria and viruses, including avian influenza A viruses [15]. AVMA recommends cooked, heat-treated commercial diets as the safest option for cats and dogs [14]. Cornell, NYC Health, and the FDA's public guidance all converge on the same list: no raw poultry, no raw meat, no raw eggs, no unpasteurized milk for pets during the outbreak [9][1][11]. Dogs can be infected with H5N1 as well, though they are less commonly reported than cats, and the same cooking guidance applies to them.
Cooking is the kill step. H5N1 is an enveloped virus, and the heat treatments used in commercial kibble and canned food production reliably inactivate it. The risk in raw pet food is not theoretical contamination. It is the deliberate decision to skip the kill step, and the documented outbreaks of 2024 and 2025 have made the cost of that decision visible in veterinary clinics from Portland to Los Angeles.
For pet owners who feed a home-prepared diet, the practical pivot is to fully cook all animal protein, use pasteurized dairy, and avoid feeding raw organ meats from poultry. The CDC's safe-internal-temperature guidance applies to pet food the same way it applies to human food [15]. The margin of error is small, because the case-fatality rate in cats is not.
A Checklist Before Bedtime
Three things, in order. First, check the freezer. If there is a bag of Northwest Naturals Feline Turkey Recipe, Monarch Raw chicken, Savage Cat Food or Savage Pet lot 11152026, or Wild Coast Raw free-range chicken in the house, dispose of it in a sealed bag and check the FDA and USDA recall pages for the latest list of affected lots and best-by dates.
Second, if a cat or dog in the home has eaten any of the recalled products in the last two weeks, call the veterinarian before any symptoms appear. The vet will tell you what to watch for and whether the animal should be examined with PPE protocols in place. Multi-cat households should treat any symptomatic animal as a potential exposure event for the others [1][9].
Third, going forward, the question to ask at the pet store is not whether a food is "premium" or "natural" but whether the animal protein is raw. If the answer is yes, during an active H5N1 outbreak, the safer choice is a cooked or heat-treated commercial diet [14][15][9][11]. The brands named in this article are not the only raw products in the freezer aisle. They are the ones the testing has caught.
Indoor cats are dying from a virus they never would have encountered in the wild. The food bowl is the new front line of a story that started in dairy barns, and the action step for pet owners is the same one public health has been giving families for two years: cook it.