Is this new Chinese respiratory disease affecting children serious and zoonotic?

Langya virus

I would think that some people are a little concerned about the news from China of hospitals being overwhelmed with sick children after a surge in respiratory illnesses. It sounds a bit like Covid-19 all over again. And as you know, Covid-19 is a zoonosis which means it’s a disease which humans caught from …

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Vet administers a pill to a cat in way which might be instructional to cat caregivers

A Cypriot veterinarian administers a pill to a cat which may be instructional to some caregivers in the UK

There are two things about this picture which are of interest to me and they might be of interest to other people too. Firstly, this is a Cypriot veterinarian administering an antiviral pill to a cat in Cyprus. It was at the time when there was a lot of news media reporting on a …

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Toxoplasmosis is a risk management exercise for the pregnant mum

Risk management of toxoplasmosis to pregnant mum

I’ve decided that the zoonotic disease, toxoplasmosis, which often is discussed on the Internet negatively, is a risk management exercise for the pregnant mum. For me, the phrase “risk management” is appropriate in this instance. It’s about identifying and understanding the risk and mitigating the possibilities of infection. There is still some misunderstandings surrounding …

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Be aware of Brucella canis a new zoonosis in the UK

Brucella canis imported from Belarus in a rescue dog and the disease is spreading in the UK including to people because the disease is a zoonosis

This is flagging up a zoonotic disease called Brucella canis in the UK. It affects dogs – but can it affect cats? – and it appears to have originated from rescue dogs imported from Eastern Europe into the UK. It is a bacterial infection and it is serious. Because it is zoonotic it can …

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You might not like your cat’s loving licks

Cat licking human hand in an act of affection is nice but some people might dislike it.

Domestic cats often instinctively lick their human caregiver on the hand and sometimes the face. It is called allogrooming. It is a friendly behavior that we see between cat buddies and as cats see us as buddies because we care for them, they lick us too. There are some other reasons why cats lick …

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British government briefly considered ordering all domestic cats to be killed

The British government considered killing all domestic cats in the UK during Covid

Cast your mind back to the Covid-19 pandemic which incidentally has not entirely finished. People are still dying of it. And remind yourself that this is a zoonosis or a zoonotic disease, one that can infect animals and the human-animal alike and transfer from one to the other which is how it started in …

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Time to check our cats’ skin as climate change is blamed for growth in tick diseases

Tick on cat

This is an underreported but a serious matter which I think should concern cat owners. The problem is that the ectoparasite, the tick, carries zoonotic diseases which they transfer to cats and dogs when they feed on the host animal. And these are serious diseases. The best known is Lyme disease. About a dozen …

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China’s zero-Covid policy contributed to high youth unemployment and great difficulty caring for pets

Down with Xi Jingpin

NEWS AND OPINION-CHINA: the current news about China, widely reported in the West, is that its economy is going through a tough time and there’s high youth unemployment. It appears that youth unemployment is so bad they’ve stopped publishing data about it. And there’s a link between the difficulty of being a pet owner …

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