The deadly diseases you can innocently catch from animals

heraldsun.com.au ^ | July 22, 2015 | Herald Sun

[Berlin_Freeper]

Cats can give people schizophrenia: There is actually a link between people who own cats and mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, and scientists blame Toxoplasma.

The instances are still low but studies have found just over half of people with schizophrenia had a cat as a child.

[ComputerGuy]

I'm not surprised by the connection between cats and schizophrenia. Cat lovers are weird; take me for example.

On a more serious note: I had Cat Scratch Fever in the late '80s. It was awful, and I'm not sure I've ever completely recovered from it.

[chris37]

There was an episode of Monsters Inside Me in which a woman’s cat had scratched her on the chest and transmitted a worm that was on the claw to her.

I think it was a round worm of some sort, but it was incapable of penetrating deeper, so it actually grew under her skin on her chest over about a month or so.

She said after a couple weeks it took on a distinctly serpentine shape and eventually started moving under her skin where she could clearly see that it was alive. It was a good size too about 10 inches long or so if I recall correctly.

She had it removed with no further complication, but GEEZ!

[ComputerGuy]

Yuk. I was scratched on the chest also. I had swollen lymph nodes in my neck and right armpit. In my case, it was good old gram-negative bacteria; Tetracycline did the trick, but I’ve never completely recovered the stamina I lost.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

Why even link to it. I’m not about to subscribe just to read one article!

[Ken H]

Nonsense. I've been around cats all my life without a problem.

Same here.

Me, too.

[Semper Mark]

*snort!* :)

[Berlin_Freeper]

Thanks. I added heraldsun.com.au to my block list.

[Vendome]

Idiotic site that seems to click bait rife.

Couldn’t easily get to the article.

black listed.

I still share and ice cream cone with my dog once in a while....

[mountainbunny]

You haven’t lived till you’ve been bitten by a parrot. My husband’s parrot once bit me and sliced my index finger from the nail bed nearly to the base of my thumb. I managed to clean and close it, but still got the worst infection of my life. Took months to heal.

We were only dating at the time, and I think that was probably the day he decided to marry me. I didn’t cry or whinge - carried myself to the bathroom and cleaned, then dressed the wound myself.

[nomad]

Did you get it from some kitty next door? But you went to the Doctor and he gave you the cure, you didn`t get it some more?

Don`t worry, Ted understands.

[ComputerGuy]

Here's what happened: I adopted a tiny kitten and it buried one of its little claws in my chest, right over the sternum. No biggie - just a little scratch. I didn't give it a second thought, except to swab the area with iodine. After a week or three, my lymph nodes in my neck and right armpit became swollen.

Each morning I awoke feeling fine, but by lunchtime I was dragging; and I mean dragging. After a few days of feeling like I was going to die, I finally went to the family doctor. He immediately thought of mono, but the tests came back negative. We're sitting there, both baffled by my condition, when he asks, "Do you have a cat?". So I sez, "Do you think I have cat scratch fever?". He answers, "I can't think of anything else. Unfortunately, there's no known treatment, since we don't know what causes it."

Well, that wasn't good enough for me, so I went to the library downtown with an eye toward conducting some research. There's a publication called the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature or some like that. Within five minutes I had located a promising article by some researchers at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. They had isolated a teeny tiny, previously-unfilterable gram-negative bacteria that had escaped detection. They found it in something like 22 out of 25 patients who displayed symptoms of Cat Scratch Fever, but who tested negative for mono.

So I went back to the doctor and presented him with a xerox of the article. He immediately poo-pooed the idea. At the same time, I had a serious sinus infection - yellow mucus and all. I asked for and received a prescription for Tetracycline. He gave it to me solely to treat the sinus problem. I filled the prescription on my way home and took two tablets when I got home. That was about 11:00 AM. Within two or three hours, the swelling had gone down and I was feeling almost human again. That doctor is still an arrogant prick who has never forgiven me.

[RoosterRedux]

My cats drive me crazy.

Particularly around 5:00 AM when they want something...but they're not sure what.

[cotton]

I caught aquarium granuloma from my tropical fish. Took 4 months to diagnose and a year to cure!

[ComputerGuy]

Sounds nasty

[Hugin]

There is actually a link between people who own cats and mental illnesses, including schizophrenia...

[vetvetdoug]

I had a client cat woman that when her pet cat died, she kept it and slept in bed with it for two weeks before she had it cremated. She had been evicted from her apartment because the cat urine was seeping through the floor to the lower renter’s ceiling. That was one weird gal.

[9YearLurker]

Hey, it makes women more intelligent!

http://web.natur.cuni.cz/etologiecloveka/images/download/Flegr,%20Havlicek%20-%201999%20-%20Changes%20in%20the%20personality%20profile%20of%20young%20women%20with%20latent%20toxoplasmosis.pdf

[ßuddaßudd]

My cat(s)scratch, nibble, chew and lick me all the time and Im OK.
But the cat who's trying to suck my breath out of me while I sleep is getting a little annoying lately..

[snuffy smiff]

Was this by any chance a gov’t-funded study? Doesn’t matter much-sounds like utter BS. I’d say just about half the population of any civilized country grew up with a cat or two either in the house or in the yard.