This is a cat-astrophe!

A rare strain of bird flu has swept through the Big Apple’s animal shelters — and city officials have locked up about 500 felines in a quarantine facility to stop the outbreak.

So far, 386 of the purring patients have tested positive for the H7N2 virus — the first time the disease has even been found in cats, officials said.

Two of the cats have died, along with the original host: a Bronx shelter adoptee named Alfred, who became sick in October.

But workers have no plans to put down any of the sick cats and instead will treat them for the virus, which has baffled the medical staff.

It was unclear how Alfred caught H7N2, which remains contagious for up to three weeks, officials said.

Even though it is considered only slightly transmittable to humans, workers are taking no chances — wearing hazmat suits whenever they are in the room with the furballs.

The cats were rounded up from shelters in all corners of the city over the last two months and taken to a makeshift facility in an industrial section of Long Island City, Queens, set up by the ASPCA.

The sick felines are being tested by workers from the Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine and the process could take up to three months, officials said.

The cost of treatment is being split by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and another nonprofit, Maddie’s Fund, which supports no-kill shelters across the country.

Workers said the cats are gleefully unaware of what is happening.

“They’re really happy playing around right now,” said ACC’s Katy Hansen, explaining that the large cages provided allow for communal group housing.

While the cats are fairly quiet during the day, workers have arrived in the morning to discover the quarantine zones were trashed overnight.

The cats’ symptoms include eye and nasal discharge, along with general weakness. Given the mild symptoms, the treatment doesn’t require a vaccine, just rest, nutrition and care by the medical team.

“We’re doing different supportive care like IV fluid and antibiotics,” said Tim Rickey, vice president of ASPCA Field Investigations and Response.

The facility treating the sick cats in cycles to get them released as soon as possible.

“What we expect to see over the next week or two is a rolling wave of everybody starting to go negative,” Dr. Sandra Newbury, director of the shelter medicine program at the University of Wisconsin, told The New York Times.

The Long Island City facility, inside a warehouse on a quiet street, contains two quarantine areas called “the hot zone.”

They are behind a big wall made out of blue tarp that is held up with duct tape.

On the second floor, there’s a corner devoted to critical cases, for the cats that require extra care, according to the Times.

The ASPCA anticipates 37 cats will be released in the next few days, some as early as Saturday.

Some already have adopted homes waiting for them, and the ASPCA and ACC will attempt to place the others.

ACC doesn’t plan to put down any of the quarantined cats, even though its current euthanasia policy allows a minimum of 72 hours for a stray’s owner to come forward and typically extends that period to 96 hours.

“If we have animals that aren’t recovering, we’ll have the medical team make a decision,” said Rickey, of the ASPCA. “We have vets and volunteers on the ground constantly evaluating them.”

The facility has an around-the-clock medical team, including six veterinarians, eight vet technicians and three medical administrators.

City health officials hope they have the outbreak under control.

“We continue to urge New Yorkers who have adopted cats from ACC shelters to be on alert for symptoms in their pets and take proper precautions,” said Dr. Mary T. Bassett, the city’s health commissioner.