Glad to see Cecil addressing the toxoplasmosis problem. My husband and I have a great deal of trouble with the neighbors’ cats pooping in our garden beds. It’s pretty icky, and they’ve dug up young plants burying their poop. The big thing is, I’d really like to have a baby at some point, and it would be awfully nice not to have to give up working in my own garden until the as-yet-unconceived baby’s over a year old.
Since you’re mostly looking for advice about dealing with your neighbors rather than commenting on what Cecil said about toxoplasmosis, I’ll move this thread to IMHO. That forum gets more traffic and I suspect you’lll get better responses there. Good luck.
Chances are good that you’ve already been infected - which is a good thing! Women who have antibiodies to toxo in their systems before conceiving don’t have to worry about passing the bugger onto their babies and casusing all the bad effects during pregnancy. Your doctor can order a test to see if you already have it and counsel you from there.
As for your neighbors, no, I don’t have any diplomatic advice. You could try guilt : “I’m trying to get pregnant and your cats’ shit could make me lose my baby.” or you could be threatening: “If I see your cats on my property, I will call animal control,” but neither one is likely to be well-received.
May I suggest you bait and live-trap the cats, and bring them to the local animal shelter? Your neighbors are doing a great disservice to their pets by letting them roam.
Um, no. Since you know perfectly well whose cats they are, you would be committing theft. And possibly risking their being euthanized. How about a fence around your garden? There are other options for keeping animals away. Anything involving water will discourage cats pretty quickly.
As WhyNot says, you’re probably carrying antibodies already. I think there may be a test for this, but I’m not sure. You could ask your OB/Gyn when you get to the actual conception.
Finally, AFAIK, the risk to the child is *during * pregnancy; not before, not after. So all that has to happen is for the mother-to-be to not dig in the garden during gestation. No big deal.
And do you think these cats are better off getting run over by a speeding car, or being humanely euthanized? Seriously, your right to let your animals run free ends at the boundary of my property. If I were less civilized (and didn’t live in the 'burbs), I’d be plinking stray cats with a .22.
Try sticking small sticks upright in your flower bed/garden. Some people have had good luck with citrus peels or mothballs. If there is a Petsmart near you, they may have a repellent you can use. Most of these have to be redone after a heavy rain.
Don’t know for her, but I’m sure. In my parasitology class, zoonotic diseases was one of the things we talked about, and this was one of them. Not to say, we’ve had this discussion in other classes (vet school).
Read the linked Cecil column. If you already had toxoplasmosis due to exposure, you already have the antibodies. If you’re not sure, you can ask your doctor to refer you for the titer test. If you have the antibodies, then you shouldn’t have any problem. Of course, if you want to tell someone else that you’re pregnant and that he/she needs to clean the litter box, then let it be that way, but you do not have to get rid of your pets because of that.
Not to mention, the most common way for pregnant women to get toxo IS NOT cats, it’s handling raw meat contaminated with toxo.
Toxoplasmosis can affect a woman and baby even if there has been plenty of exposure before. My mother lost my younger sibling at 6 1/2 months pregnancy and the doctors were confident it was toxoplasmosis. She had owned cats her entire life.
So, yes, in the case mentioned, they said they knew exactly whose cats they were. Ergo, capturing them and turning them over to be euthanized would be IMHO cruel and probably theft, since you would be taking something you know belongs to another person.
FWIW, I agree that it’s better to keep cats indoors for a lot of reasons. Being hit by a car is the least of the dangers. The solution is NOT to steal them and do away with them yourself.
Yes, but one may own cats and never become infected, or become infected for the first time after years of owing cats. It’s unlikely, but possible. And that’s why I said “chances are good you’ve already been infected” not “I’m positive you’ve already been infected.”
Considering the conditions of the poop in question (dried out and being dug in), it’s much more likely that a toxo has gotten pulverized, airborne and inhaled than even a regular situation of an owner and a frequently emptied, moist litterbox.
There is indeed a test, and your doctor can set it up.
And yes, I’m sure about it not generally being dangerous to get toxo outside of pregnancy (There are some possible dangers, as outlined by Cecil, but they have nothing to do with a fetus, obviously). It’s the toxins produced in those two weeks of initial infection that are so dangerous. If you’ve already been exposed and got the antibodies to prove it *before *you conceive, your baby is not at risk.
People who are immunocompromised, like those living with HIV, are very much at risk for toxoplasmosis. I’m surprised that wasn’t mentioned in the column.
When I was pregnant I read lots of books etc and they all advised to garden with gloves on to avoid a potential problem with toxoplasmosis exposure.
You may want to wear one of those disposable dust mask thingies?
Or just not garden - I put in annuals this year during my pregnancy and just watered them - they didn’t even need weeding because I used a flower box. I didn’t put in a herb garden like I usually do.
I wish it were that simply. “Trying to get pregnant” generally means months or years of trying. You have only about two weeks at a time when you know you’re not pregnant (and according to another poster, that’s about the length of time toxo lives in the system). So if you’re trying to get pregnant, it’s best to basically behave as if you already are pregnant. That could be an awfully long time of not doing any gardening.
Children up to the age of one year are at risk, too, according to my doctor.
Thanks for the many suggestions. We’ve tried a number of different things–citrus peels, cat repellents, various kinds of pepper, prickly things around the edges of the beds–but nothing’s done the job so far. Most of it washes away, and even when we’ve gotten some measure of success in one bed, the cats have taken to pooping in another part of the yard. It’s a good-size yard (yeah, yeah, poor us) and we both work full-time, so going out every day to sprinkle the perimeter is not feasible.
It’s also kind of annoying to spend a lot of your time and money on keeping other people’s pets off your property. It is our garden, and I do think we should be able to enjoy it without fear of disease caused by the neighbors’ animals.
Of course, if the only way to be safe is to do no gardening until a year after the as-yet-unconceived child is born, then that’s what we’ll do. But that seems a bit extreme, and I was really hoping someone could suggest a tactful approach to take with the neighbors.