Beware, Cats!

Leg Iron discusses the latest little health scare: Cats spreading MRSA.

As Leg Iron points out, this is utter bollocks – cat owners may well have a higher incidence of Staphylococcus aureus in their homes, but not methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, as this is found in hospitals.

Pet dogs, birds, rabbits and horses can also carry the disease which is “flipping” between humans and their animals, scientists believe.

Really? And why are we not all dropping dead with nasty infections, then? Is it because what “scientists believe” is in reality a pile of hokum designed to scare the bejeesus out of us and as such is best ignored?

Animals who have close contact with humans pick up the superbug and then leave traces of it around the home where other people can be infected.

So can people – especially, it seems, in hospitals; somewhere my fourteen cats have never been.

Look, germs are a fact of life. We have lived with them for millennia and always will. Our immune systems are designed to cope with them, so living with animals is perfectly safe. We have lived alongside cats since ancient Egyptian times and haven’t died yet. We are too useful to them.

A study of homes by researchers at the Center for Hygiene and Health in Home and Community at Simmons College in Boston, found MRSA in nearly half of the 35 residences they sampled, mostly on wet surfaces like baths, sinks and tap handles.

Excuse me!?! Thirty five. Is that all? This is not by any stretch of the imagination a suitably representative sample from which to draw any conclusions. It’s laughable. Oh, and as LI points out, wet surfaces and cats… Don’t make me laugh.

Dr Elizabeth Scott, who led the study, told the New York Times: “There are a number of papers coming out now showing that pets pick up MRSA from us and that they shed it back into the environment again.”

Yes, and so do people… Oh, yeah, we said that already. But so what? This is nothing new, is it (apart from it being MRSA – which it isn’t)?

Medical experts recommended people should frequently wash their hands before and after playing with a pet and not let animals lick their faces. They should also not wash pet food bowls in the same kitchen sink as cutlery.

Oh, my word… You would think that we are delicate creatures without immune systems. Sure, washing hands regularly makes sense, but I wouldn’t do it every time I handled one of the cats, that would be silly. I would do so before handling food, for example. One of our cats will regularly wake us by pawing our faces – and guess what, we haven’t died of some horrible cat-borne disease yet. And, yes we do wash the cat bowls in the same sink as we do the general washing up – we only have one sink and it is kept clean as are the surfaces that the little buggers insist on walking along. Basic hygiene isn’t difficult.

This article, frankly, is the usual ignorant twaddle dressed up as serious journalism. The so-called “research” is nothing more than a scare story designed to make us fearful. It doesn’t make me fearful, it makes me angry. And, no, I am not remotely concerned about getting bugs from my cats. Ticks, maybe, but not bugs.