Thinking about getting a cat? Think twice. Cats carry the toxoplasma parasite. The parasite starts in a rat, and leads the rat to like the smell of the cat, and so get eaten. Some researchers have implicated the parasite in human schizophrenia. Here is the link: Toxoplasma Gondii Parasite.
Another nasty thing that cats carry is cat-scratch fever. More details here Cat scratch disease in Wikipedia. Once a kitten was introduced into the house, and it used to claw at the old dog's back leg. The dog became lame in that leg, but one vet gave antibiotics and the dog recovered. The antibiotics wore out, the dog got sicker yet, and the next vet looked at the x-rays and said it was bone cancer. The dog had to be put down. Cat scratch disease mostly affects the very young, the very old, and those who are immuno-compromised for various reasons. I read once that thirty percent of cats are carriers.
Yet another deadly parasite is the “racoon brain worm”. About which you can read here: Baylisascaris in Wikipedia. This little worm is happy in its definitive host, the racoon. However, if the eggs, which remain viable for years, and which are passed out in racoon feces, enter a paratenic host such as a human, they break out of the digestive system because they are unhappy, and travel to the brain, the eyes, the spinal cord. At each step the body defends itself, and so they keep moving. Eventually they die, but the human host can be very sick. I suspect that another dog succumbed that nasty bug, because it liked to eat stinky things and roll in them, and there were racoons in the backyard.
No comments:
Post a Comment