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 …

Read more

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 …

Read more

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 …

Read more

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 …

Read more

Flushing cat litter down the loo can transmit Toxocara eggs to others and block sewers

Flushing cat litter down the loo can spread Toxocara eggs to others and block sewers.

Water company comment on this In the UK, Collette Parker, Anglian Water customer engagement manager, said: This kind of animal waste should never be flushed down the loo. Although rare, dog and cat poo can carry Toxocara, which is one of the very few bacteria [they mean parasite] that we are unable to eliminate …

Read more

Can I cuddle my cat with ringworm?

Ringworm transmitted to cat owners can be cured in minutes with UVB light

NO. People ask whether they can cuddle their cat if their cat has ringworm. Through personal experience, I would strongly suggest that you do not cuddle your cat if they have ringworm. This is because it is a highly contagious fungal infection which is likely to be transmitted to you as it is zoonotic …

Read more

Notes about bird flu, domestic cats and people

Bird flu

It might be useful just to briefly touch on the bird flu epidemic which affects America and other countries. I’m going to refer exclusively to America in this article partly because America’s CDC have some very useful information about it. Firstly, they remind us that bird flu is zoonotic. It can be transferred from …

Read more

Experts sound alarm over babesiosis a tick-borne disease that kills people and infects cats

Babesiosis on the rise in the United States

The tick, an unpleasant ectoparasite, is back in the news. We all know about Lyme disease carried by ticks but this is different. It’s a disease called babesiosis and it can be fatal to people in 20% of sufferers. And it’s on the increase in America where the incidence of the disease has more …

Read more

follow it link and logo