Sort of a slow day.
Cows get cow pox and it is related to chicken pox in humans.
Do chickens really get “chicken pox”?
How about cats?
Chicken pox is neither a chicken disease nor is it caused by a pox virus.
Chickenpox got its name from the fact that chickenpox lesions look like smallpox lesions but the disease is much weaker (and “chickenhearted”) than smallpox.
As South Park fans know, chickenpox is caused by a herpesvirus known as VZV.
I don’t know if there is a feline or avine form of VZV, but AFAIK, cats and boids can’t catch human VZV.
Alphagene wrote:
Avine?!
Alphagene, I believe the term you were looking for was avian.
Doesn’t anybody use a dictionary anymore? 
Actually, cow pox is closely related to smallpox, not chicken pox. William Jenner is credited with discovering vaccination. He observed that milkmaids, who contracted cow pox, seemed to be immune to smallpox, and felt that a deliberately induced case of cow pox was preferable to the risk of smallpox.
Shingles is caused by the same virus as chicken pox.
Yabob, I knew Alphagene wrote something contrary to what I was thinking and correct but I didn’t get it until your post, thanks.
I sent a longer version of this question to a friend who happens to be a mindreader and understood that “chicken pox” stood for “some common virus” and he added in the following.
J: “Why don’t cats get chicken pox?”
G: “For the same reason that a cold virus doesn’t spend a lot of time in your knee. The proteins on the outside of the virus won’t interact with the proteins in the cat’s cells. If all of the surfaces of different types of cells in your body look different, you can imagine that the difference between a cell in your lungs and a cell in a cat’s lungs would look very different. Viruses can only recognize a subset of those. Some viruses are more “promiscuous” than others and can recognize a larger subset of proteins, but it’s perfectly safe to say that a virus that infects a rose will not infect you.”
And I felt a lot better about all of that until I remembered a near obstetrical emergency - IIRC a woman in late pregnancy was given a bunny caught in a garden trap. Her OB said she could have caught something from just handling the bunny that would have caused retardation in the baby and they would have had to induce labor immediately if the woman hadn’t been around cats and probably have “caught” whatever it is/was already from the cats.
That’s a cross of three species and “has to” be a virus.
Sound familiar to anyone?
Jois
So much for “has to” be - Toxoplasmosis, a protozoan parasite.