As cats across Southern California die from consuming human and pet food contaminated by the H5N1 bird flu virus, one pet owner has decided to fight back — using legal recourse to obtain financial restitution for the tens of thousands of dollars he says he spent trying to save the lives of his three pet cats.
On Wednesday, lawyers for Joseph Journell — a San Bernardino resident who said two of his four cats died and a third was hospitalized for more than week after consuming raw milk containing the H5N1 virus — sent a letter to Mark McAfee, owner of Fresno-based Raw Farm LLC, demanding McAfee “cease all communication with Mr. Journell and reimburse him” for the money Journell spent on veterinary services, lost wages and “other out-of-pocket expenses.”
Since Dec. 1, at least 11 California house cats have died as a result of consuming contaminated raw milk and raw pet food. Seven have been reported in Los Angeles County, two in Santa Barbara County and Journell’s two in San Bernardino County.
Experts say this is likely a vast undercount, as many veterinarians and pet owners are unaware of the connection of raw milk and meat to H5N1 bird flu and the unique sensitivity of cats to this particular virus.
Since the latest iteration of the virus first appeared in North America in 2021, wildlife officials estimate that hundreds of cats — wild and domesticated — have died as a result of infection, including 20 animals at a big cat sanctuary in Washington State in December.
Indeed, since the virus was first reported in dairy cows in March 2024, one of the sentinel signs that a farm has been infected is the presence of dead barn cats that drank contaminated raw milk.
In late November, Santa Clara County health officials detected the virus in commercial samples of Raw Farm raw milk. The finding was confirmed by state public health officials and a voluntary recall quickly followed. Over the next week, more samples tested positive, and on Nov. 29 the California Department of Food and Agriculture suspended sales of raw milk products from the Fresno-based dairy.
It was before the first recall was announced that Journell said he purchased the contaminated milk — two gallons on Nov. 20 from Vitamin City Health Food in San Dimas — that made his cats ill. He has photos of the recalled milk containers and lot numbers.
Journell said he believes that raw milk has unique health benefits — including immune system enhancers and helpful probiotics — and until the incident with his cats, he regularly consumed about three gallons per week. He said he started sharing it with his cats last year, when the oldest — Alexander, 14 — began losing weight. He thought the raw milk might help.
Journell said it did: Alexander gained three or four pounds after several weeks of drinking the milk.
Journell then began giving it to all of his cats. All but one — a shy, young female named Cleopatra — took to it.
For months, everything was going just fine. But in the days following his Nov. 20 purchase, he noticed that Alexander was “off.”
“He wasn’t doing too good,” said Journell, noting that Alexander drank much more of the milk than the other cats. “He’d jump on the bed and just put his head down. I thought, what’s wrong?”
So the following week, Journell brought the cat to a veterinarian, who diagnosed Alexander with pancreatitis and sent him home with antibiotics. The next day, Alexander grew sicker, so Journell took him to an emergency vet clinic about an hour south in Perris, where the cat’s temperature had dropped alarmingly and he was placed in an incubator. He died from heart failure on Thanksgiving Day.
It was at this point that Journell considered the raw milk as the possible culprit — although he suspected a bacterial infection, not H5N1.
He brought his two other milk-drinking cats to the vet to get them checked, and was sent home with antibiotics and fluids.
On Nov. 30, one of his other cats, a young black-and-white named Tuxedo, began vomiting frequently and profusely. Alarmed, Journell raced him to the emergency vet clinic — one hand on the steering wheel, the other in the carrier, petting Tux to keep him calm.
“He started convulsing, and I was petting him and trying to calm him down,” recalled Journell. “Then he stopped. His body relaxed. I thought he had calmed down. I thought he was alive. But he had died.”
Journell returned home and took the third raw-milk-drinking cat’s temperature; Big Boy had a fever. This time, Journell went to a specialist in Ontario who was able to diagnose and effectively treat the cat.
Journell said he reached out to McAfee on Dec. 3, to see if he might be able to help.
It was McAfee who first mentioned the virus, said Journell, who had believed the illnesses were related to bacterial infections, such as listeria or salmonella. And according to Journell, McAfee assured him via text that his cats couldn’t get the bird flu virus from the milk.
“He said the avian flu cannot survive in raw milk, that within a couple hours of refrigeration the bioactives in raw milk will kill any virus. That by the time it gets to the store, it’s already been refrigerated for a day or two, so there should be no virus,” recalled Journell of the exchange. “He also said his cats drank the raw milk all the time, and never got sick.”
The Times requested to review the text exchange from Journell; he declined, citing his counsel’s advice.
Journell said he told the veterinarians caring for Big Boy about the conversation he had with McAfee, and they told him there was no evidence to support McAfee’s statements. Nevertheless, they said they would treat Big Boy for both avian flu and for a bacterial infection. The cat was given Tamiflu (a treatment known to be effective for bird flu in felines) and antibiotics. Big Boy eventually recovered — he spent eight days in the hospital — but lost control of his hind legs for several weeks and his vision was, and still is, impaired, Journell said.
Journell said he had to get the cat a “wheelchair”-type device for Big Boy, and had to hire caretakers to tend to him while Journell was at work.
In addition to treating Big Boy for the flu, veterinarians took urine samples on Dec. 4 and sent them to Cornell University’s diagnostic laboratory. On Dec. 6, the sample tested positive for H5N1 bird flu. A second test conducted by a U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory confirmed the presence of the virus on Dec. 18.
Asked about the test results and letter sent by Journell’s lawyer, McAfee said there was no way to prove Journell’s cats had consumed Raw Farm milk. In an email, he suggested that it was possible the cats “were fed Monarch pet food which is confirmed to be making cats sick” — a reference to a recall involving the San Jacinto-based pet food company.
Journell said his cats eat only Blue Buffalo-brand wet and dry kibble.
And he noted that his fourth cat — the young, shy female who never drank the milk — didn’t become ill.
McAfee cited the low viral count found in the test samples conducted at Cornell as a reason to dismiss the findings. The Cornell research found cycle thresholds, or Ct levels, higher than 35 in the sample, which indicates low viral levels; typically, experts look for levels under 20 as conclusive evidence that the virus is circulating.
However, Jane Sykes, professor of medicine and epidemiology at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, reviewed the test results for The Times and said while viral levels were low in the sample, there was no doubt about its presence.
“They’ve tested multiple genes, and they’re all positive. It’s clearly positive, and it’s clearly H5N1 and not another influenza virus based on the test,” she said.
Richard Webby, director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds., who reviewed the tests for The Times agreed that while the numbers showed low viral amounts, and that urine isn’t the best sample medium, “I would not conclude they are too low to be meaningful.”
The tests also specifically looked for and found the dairy version of the virus — or B3.13.
McAfee also said that PCR tests used to identify H5N1 bird flu in milk or those used to test the cat’s urine do not show whether the virus is active or dead — it just shows there are viral fragments of RNA in the sample. It’s one of the issues health officials are dealing with while monitoring wastewater for the virus: Positive H5N1 samples could be showing nothing more than inactivated virus from pasteurized milk, not necessarily live virus from another source.
Sykes agreed with McAfee that the tests do not show whether the virus is alive or dead, but said, “When you’ve got it in the urine of a cat, you know the cat’s infected.”
In addition, she said, the cats’ symptoms all track with what one would expect with H5N1 infection in a feline: lethargy, loss of motor control, vomiting and seizures. The disease manifests as largely neurological in cats; necropsies show viral buildup in their brains. And cats everywhere are getting sick from the virus.
Despite a request by public health officials, Journell decided not to donate the bodies of his two deceased cats for further testing. He said that’s because when he asked the officials what would happen to the bodies, “they said they’d cut them up and then throw the pieces away. I couldn’t do that. I wanted them cremated.”
