So, our house is a winter wonderland of influenza and strep throat at the moment. But the dog is bounding around oblivious to the communal viruses. She licks us on the lips as a welcome home announcement.
So why isn’t she sick as a dog also?
While there are exceptions, most viruses and bacteria are species-specific. People won’t catch what the dog has, the dog won’t catch what the cat has, etc.
Zoonotic diseases include: bartonella, ringworm, giardia, leptosporosis, toxoplasmosis, rabies, e-coli, rocky mountain spotted fever, lyme disease, malaria.
There are more if anyone wants to chime in, but you probably get the idea that it’s not the “common” viruses, bacteria, etc. that you need to worry about.
As a trivia, if you have a ferret, it can be infected with the human influenza virus.
I’m assuming by Bartonella you mean Bartonella henselae of cat-scratch fever? While I was in clinics (less than a year ago), the clinicians told me the cat itself is not affected (although that was up for debate as someone was researching about it).
Zoonotic diseases also include some intestinal parasites of dogs and cats. They’re adapted to them, but in us, humans, they migrate through weird places, since we’re not their host. They can cause cutaneous larva migrans (under the skin), visceral, and ocular larva migrans. Those last two can have serious consequences: Blindness in the case of ocular larva migrans, and organ problems depending on where the larva migrate (brain, liver, intestine, etc.).
RMSF and Lyme disease are not really transmitted from dogs (or other animals) to humans. Their vector is a flea (which is not affected, IIRC?), and we’re just the unlucky ones who get bitten by it. In any case, I don’t consider them the same as the parasites I described above.
Someone playing with a dog that has Lyme disease (assuming ticks are removed) is not going to get Lyme, while someone who is playing with a dog with leptospirosis or parasite infestation can get the disease from them.
Yep. And the cats do get sick.
The National Vet Lab has everything you ever wanted to know about bartonella. Pretty interesting stuff for anyone who really wants to know, gross pictures and everything.
I’ll try to make it short: we’ve had a bunch of cats here at the shelter (feline-only stray rescue) test positive for bartonella. These were all cats that were symptomatic in some way as described in the website above. Stomatitis, especially, seems to be the most common, and heartbreaking, symptom that we see here.
One cat in particular lived here for over a year, described by everyone as having really big feet, was otherwise healthy until he developed horrible stomatitis, then got URI symptoms that we just couldn’t help him kick. He lost a ton of weight, we were starting to think lymphoma on top of the stomatitis, were considering pulling all of his teeth, then sent in the bartonella test (we weren’t doing many then, about 3 years ago). 4+ positive. 3 weeks of azythromycin treatment and he made a remarkable recovery. After just 4 more months he had put on 4 pounds over his original weight and “grew into” his feet. It was really amazing. His personality changed from shy to outgoing and he was adopted soon after. I’ll never forget that guy.
Had to share.
And the part where people can get bartonella from a cat-scratch, but cats don’t give it to each other except with fleas as the carrier. All the cats who test positive here had flea dirt if not live fleas found when they were admitted to the shelter.
Didn’t know that about ferrets. Interesting.