It’s that time of year again… time for the US annual rabies surveillance report in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (Dyer et al 2013).
Some highlights:
I had an interesting question today about the cat-associated parasite Toxoplasma gondii. It can cause serious infection in people that ingest it, particularly in immunocompromised individuals and pregnant women, but disease is rare. Since cats can pass one form of the parasite in their feces, the question was whether using flushable kitty litter is
I’m not a big fan of the title of a paper in the latest edition of the Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology…”Pets are ‘risky business’ for patients undergoing continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis” (Yahya et al 2013), even though it’s an interesting paper that actually takes a reasonable
We’ve just posted a new info sheet about Capnocytophaga. One member of this bacterial group in particular, Capnocytophaga canimorsus, makes the news periodically because it can cause devastating infection in some individuals, like the Ottawa woman who lost three limbs after one of her own dogs accidentally bit her. This kind of
The latest Worms & Germs infosheets are all about some common and not-so-common members of a particular group of parasites: tapeworms. There are a number of different groups and species of tapeworms that can infect pets, people, and other domestic animals, and sorting through which is which can be tricky, so we created a Tapeworms
Dogs have had some bad PR lately because of some high-profile bites and bite infections in people. So, in the spirit of fairness, I’ll write about a dog as a victim of an attack… from a cat.
A paper in a recent edition of Veterinary Dermatology (Banovic et al 2013) describes necrotizing cellulitis
I grew up with cats, and they were all indoor/outdoor. I never really thought about it since that was just the way things were done. Yet, as much as he’d like to convince us otherwise, our current cat Finnegan is an indoor cat. There are a lot of reasons for this.
One reason for keeping
Ok, I had to Google that one…”Moggy” not being a typical Canadian term. Apparently, it’s British slang for "cat." Anyway, the "Death by moggy” article in the UK paper The Sun is pretty basic, mentioning the death of a 59-year-old woman who would probably be considered a classic cat hoarder. She was single and slept
Something I often discuss when doing infection control talks is needlestick injuries. The contrast between the approach to needlestick injuries (and blood exposure in general) in veterinary and human medicine is pretty astounding. In humans, there are strong educational campaigns, careful reporting, testing and treatment protocols, and increasing use of "safety engineered sharps devices" like
The New York Times has a nice article on hospitals that allow patient’s pets to visit. This is a controversial area, with policies (when they are actually present) that range from wide-open access to complete prohibition. Like most things in life, there’s a middle ground that’s the most reasonable.
The positive aspects of people
