Nov. 6, 2009 -- Until this week, many veterinarians asserted that it was a myth that house cats could catch the deadly H1N1 flu from their owners.

Those veterinarians, along with other health experts, are revising their views after an Iowa Department of Public Health announcement Wednesday that the virus has been confirmed in an indoor 13-year-old cat, which likely contracted the illness from two flu-sick humans in its home.

Although all of the victims have since recovered, this latest H1N1 animal case puts the focus on humans as the primary carriers of the illness, which experts don't even want to call "swine" flu anymore.

"We're seeing reverse zoonosis, with the virus jumping from people to animals," Alfonso Torres told Discovery News, explaining that several ferrets have also been infected, resulting in at least one pet ferret death in Nebraska.

"In theory, cats could infect humans, but there is no evidence for that yet," added Torres, former chief veterinary officer of the United States who is now associate dean for public policy at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine.

Torres was "not entirely surprised" by the diagnosis in a cat. He said that until four years ago, no evidence supported that felines could catch viruses from other species.

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That changed when several captive tigers and leopards died after consuming chickens infected with avian flu (H5N1). A later study concluded that house cats could also contract avian flu.