1 INTRODUCTION
In China, pets are increasingly becoming an integral part of people’s lives, while the viral infectious diseases showed great threat to cat health. Felid species are susceptible to all pathogens that infect the domestic cat (Filoni et al., 2012). The infection of Feline herpetovirus type 1 (FHV-1), Feline Panleukopenia Virus (FPV), Feline calicivirus (FCV) in tiger and cheetah have been reported in China (Chen, 2013; Gao et al., 2003; Qiu et al., 2000). FCV and FHV-1 are the main viral pathogens of upper respiratory tract infection in cats, and FHV causes rhinotracheitis that also named feline viral rhinotracheitis virus, while the FCV often causes stomatitis, gingivitis and circumscribed lesions of the tongue. FPV infections are highly contagious in all members of the family Felidae, resulting in high mortality, panleukopenia and serious enteric symptom (Yang et al., 2008). The infection of feline leukemia virus (FeLV), feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) and feline infectious peritonitis virus (FIPV) have been reported in China (Chang, de Groot, Egberink, & Rottier, 2010; Cong et al., 2016; Pan, Wang, & Wang, 2018). The infection of FeLV and FIV in domestic cats would cause clinical disease worldwide (Arjona et al., 2007), in which, FeLV is mainly associated with lymphoma, leukemia, and anemia (Lutz et al., 2009), and FIV is associated with immune suppression and could be used as an animal model for AIDS research (Bendinelli et al., 1995).
Due to the lack of epidemiology on infectious diseases and seroprevalence of viral pathogens of cat national wide, the aim of the study was to investigate the prevalence of FHV-1, FeLV, FPV, FCV, FIV and FIPV of cat in China. Nucleotide detection of 1,326 samples collected from Harbin, Shenyang, Hohhot, Tangshan, Tianjin, Beijing, Langfang, Shijiazhuang, Qingdao, Zhengzhou, Luoyang, Hefei, Chongqing, Taizhou, Guangzhou and Haikou were conducted from 2016 to 2019, together with the serological analysis of the infection of FCV, FHV-1 and FPV.