I have 9 cats who live quite comfortably in a enclosed double garage - the “tool room” of the garage is my office. This enclosed space is heated and air conditioned. There are carpeted shelves going around the room, windows for bird/squirrel watching, and a sofa and recliner where the Mama does a lot of her reading.
This sanctuary has been in place since the summer of 2003. None of the cats have left this house since then, other than regular visits to the vet for shots.
I have been sick with what the vets would call an “upper respiratory infection” for a long time.
Can this type of infection pass from human to cat? I now have 4 cats with URS and I am having to insult my feline overlords by administering antibiotics to them.
Could they have caught a bug from me? None of them have any access to the great outdoors and I am confused.
?Human Bordetella bronchiseptica infection related to contact with infected animals: persistence of bacteria in host
P Gueirard, C Weber, A Le Coustumier and N Guiso
Centre National de Reference des Bordetelles, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.
Within a period of 2 1/2 years, Bordetella bronchiseptica was isolated four times from a 79-year-old woman with bronchopneumonia. We have demonstrated by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis that this infection was related to contact with infected rabbits. The initial human B. bronchiseptica isolate had a phenotype characteristic of usual B. bronchiseptica clinical isolates; it produced toxin and adhesins, such as adenylate cyclase-hemolysin, filamentous hemagglutinin, and pertactin, and was able to induce lethality in a murine respiratory model. By contrast, although the three successive human isolates produced adhesins, they did not express adenylate cyclase-hemolysin and were unable to induce lethality. This implies that adenylate cyclase- hemolysin is required to induce lethality. We suggest that B. bronchiseptica may persist in the host, with expression of adenylate cyclase-hemolysin being essential for the initiation of infection and expression of adhesins being essential for persistence. "
Note that the full article also mentions cats.
Another "Human infection with the agent of feline pneumonitis.
J Schachter, HB Ostler, KF Meyer - Lancet, 1969 - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Human infection with the agent of feline pneumonitis. Schachter J, Ostler HB,
Meyer KF. MeSH Terms: Adult; Animals; Cat Diseases/microbiology …
A further search on Google Scholar sez “maybe” to both your questions. Hopefully a real expert will come around. What does you vet say?