Foley Tim - Is it safe to kiss my cat?: and other questions you were afraid to ask

Copyright 2017 by Carol Ann Rinzler

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Michael Short

Cover and interior artwork by Tim Foley

ISBN: 978-1-5107-2184-5

eISBN: 978-1-5107-2185-2

Printed in China

For my husband,

Perry Luntz,

Always.

And Katy the Cat, of course.

Introduction

Catastrophes are terrifying, but most times its the little things that do you in.

Consider earthquakes, tsunamis, and lightning strikes.

Scary, right?

Not compared to turtles, cats, and basketball.

In 2013, not a single American perished in an earthquake or a tsunami on United States soil. Twenty-three of us succumbed after being struck by lightning, a personal tragedy to be sure, but according to the National Weather Service, in any given year your own chances of being hit by a bolt of electricity is the proverbial one in a million.

On the other hand, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that same year about 450 Americans, mostly children, ended with a Salmonella infection after playing with a pet turtle; 12,500, again, mostly children, developed cat scratch fever; and a whopping 500,000 United States citizens of all ages went to a hospital emergency room with an injury suffered while playing basketball.

Turtles? Cats? Basketball? It makes you wonder: If theyre not safe, what is? Actually, nothing. As Jim Morrison and The Doors once sang to us, No one here gets out alive. But that doesnt mean you cant improve your chances to stick around as long as possible by following some simple rules to determine whats safe and what isnt, beginning with whether to kiss your adorable cat.

ANIMALS

Some people talk to animals.

Not many listen though. Thats the problem.

A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Is it safe to kiss your cat?

You may think that Fluffys performing intimate bathing rituals with her tongue makes mouth-to-mouth kissing a problem, but Paul Maza, co-director of the Cornell Universitys College of Veterinary Medicine health center, says that when shes done with her ablutions, fecal matter is swallowed and quickly disappears from her mouth. More to the point, most of the micro-organisms normally found in a cat (or dogs) mouth are similar to those in yours, including the bugs that cause periodontal disease in both pets and humans. The exception would be an outdoor cat who forgets to mention that shes been hunting and devouring small animals, which can add really unpleasant microbes to the oral mix. If your cat will sit still for it, brushing her teeth will reduce the bacterial population and her own risk of cavities and gum problems, but if you are truly uneasy about full-on kissing, a peck on the top of the head is perfectly satisfying. Ditto for dogs, Maza adds: I kiss my dog all the time.

to let your dog lick you?

Canines absolutely love to lick stuff, including you. Normally, thats a warm and friendly exercise, but you may catch a momentary case of the shivers when you read that one dogs lick passed a zoonose (an infectious disease that can be transmitted from animals to people) on to his owner. In 2016, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a report about a patient whose symptomsslurred speech, headache, diarrhea, fever, failing kidneyspuzzled her doctors until they finally pinned it all on a bacteria called Capnocytophaga canimorsus . This bug, found in feline and canine mouths and nasal passages, is normally passed to humans via an animal bite; one of the doctors said it was only one of two such lick-transmitted cases he had seen in thirty years. The woman was treated with antibiotics and recovered. The BMJ does not report whether she still accepts a friendly canine lick.

to let your pet chew your finger?

Human bites are often considered more serious than cat and dog bites, probably because human biting seems more unnatural and thus more aggressive than a nip from your cat or dog. The human mouth may contain nearly two hundred different species of bacteria, most of which flourish in that hard white tarter between the teeth. A bite that pierces the skin and draws blood may transmit these, plus a whole list of problems including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, the herpes simplex virus (HSV), syphilis, tuberculosis, actinomycosis, and tetanus. So kiss your cat (or dog), but dont annoy her (or him)and check out Is It Safe To Give a Dog a Bone? on page 20 to see whose bite is most powerful or painful.

to scoop the litter?

Cats are finicky creatures that spend as much as 50 percent of their day cleaning and grooming themselves to stimulate the production of sebum, the oily substance secreted by the sebaceous glands that makes their coats shiny. Grooming also removes loose hair (oh, those hairballs!) and may even wipe away parasites on the skin. Obviously, any creature that obsessed with cleanliness prefers a clean litter box. If you choose to ignore this truism, your cat will simply find another place to do her (or his) business. Scoop at least once a day to remove clumped urine and feces and keep your home free of the dreaded cat smell. Once a week, dump the entire boxful of litter into a trash bag, deposit the bag in a dump site outside your home, scrub the litter box with detergent, and then dry it with a disposable paper towel or let it air dry before refilling with clean litter. Be careful not to handle the contents so as to avoid contact with organisms such as Toxoplasma gondii ( T. gondii ), a single-cell parasite that infects a wide range of animals and birds but reproduces only in felines, both wild and domestic. Cats pick up T. gondii by eating infected animals, such as rats or mice or birds. Then they pass the parasite in their feces, so if you touch the waste you may end up with the T. gondii disease, toxoplasmosis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that more than sixty million people in the United States already harbor T. gondii but most never develop signs and symptoms of disease. There are, however, exceptions: infants born to infected mothers, people with a weakened immune system such as those with HIV/AIDS, cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, and transplant patients who are taking medicines to lower the risk of rejecting the new organ.