We have good reasons to forbid her. She’s a hateful little beast who sits in the window and hisses and snarls at anything that walks by. The few times she has escaped she charges off to stalk birds and squirrels. She’s just plain mean.
Now we have another reason: she might come back with a disease to kill us.
Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished. The data appear to have been mistakenly posted but includes crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets.
In one household, an infected cat might have spread the virus to another cat and to a human adolescent, according to a copy of the data table obtained by The New York Times. The cat died four days after symptoms began. In a second household, an infected dairy farmworker appears to have been the first to show symptoms, and a cat then became ill two days later and died on the third day.
She’d probably savor the idea of bringing us down a notch, but it looks like she’d be the one most likely to succumb. She’d probably want to do it anyway.
Scientists have long known that cats are highly susceptible to the virus. At least 85 domestic cats have been infected since late 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But there had not previously been any documented cases of cats passing the virus to people.
“Given the number of cats in the U.S. and the close contact with people, there is definitely a need to understand the potential risk,” said Dr. Diego Diel, a veterinarian and virologist at Cornell University.
Although cats may be infected when they prey on infected wild birds, cases among domestic cats in the United States began rising last year as the virus spread through dairy farms. On many farms, dead cats were the first signal that cows had been infected. Several recent cases in pet cats have also been linked to contaminated raw pet food or raw milk.
H5N1 is often fatal in cats, which may develop severe neurological symptoms.
By the way, notice the mention that this was on the CDC website until it was abruptly removed. We can’t trust any of our major health institutions any more, I guess.
Gotta get your priorities straight on the bird flu. MuskTrumpster isn’t going to allow another pandemic to spoil his most beautiful presidency. Even if there is one. Even if it kills millions of Americans. We have too many people anyway, and besides it largely kills the old (useless and expensive) and the poor (mainly black/brown people, and probably illegal immigrants). In the meantime, there’s billions of dollars to pilfer.
Unpopular opinion: cats don’t belong outside. It’s bad for wildlife, it’s dangerous for the cats and it’s plainly being an asshole to your neighbours who neither signed up for cat shit in their garden or dismembered mice on their terrace.
All of my friends and I keep our cats inside already. But this has me worried. It’s not just domestic cats that are at risk: last fall a big cat sanctuary in Washington State lost 20 out of their 37 cats. The contamination vector was apparently infected chickens and turkeys being sold for pet food rather than destroy: don’t feed your cat raw poultry, it’s a disease vector.
There is once again, a pandemic for Trump to ignore.
This time it is in chickens at least, one of the key parts of our food supply.
In the latest outbreak, so far we have killed 100 million chickens and turkeys in disease culls.
The Federal response to fighting the current Avian flu pandemic in chickens hasn’t been all that great. They’ve done a lot but a lot of people in the field think there has been a lack of resources and coordination.
Right now, what Federal efforts there are have been stopped or downsized by the Trump regime.
There is no end in sight.
A week ago, a dozen eggs at my local store were $8.50 and there were only a few cartons in the case. Chicken and turkey supplies were limited and the price was higher. The chicken based cat food that is one of the few things my old cat will eat was out of stock.
We might be looking at egg, chicken, turkey, and cat food shortages for quite a while here.
Many or most public health people aren’t too concerned about a human avian flu pandemic.
It could certainly happen.
We see new flu virus pandemics in humans all the time.
We know how to fight flu pandemics, we see this one coming, we have antiviral drugs, and already developed vaccines. The flu viruses aren’t even as transmissable as the the Covid-19 virus.
This data is old from 2020. The Covid-19 virus has been evolving for greater transmissability since then.
The pandemics to watch out for are the ones we don’t see coming at us. Like the Covid-19 virus which just appeared one day.
That being said, a new pandemic in humans from a new virus strain is inherently not all that predictable. We need to keep a close watch and stop any outbreaks of bird flues as soon as possible before they get away from us.
No. 2, this may not be the most popular of opinions either but cats are an invasive species like kudzu and pythons in the Florida everglades, and have done just as much damage. The difference is that unlike kudzu and snakes, they have cute faces that give them a huge fan following.
Cats have been devastating to native songbird populations. One of the best things that could happen to native songbird populations would be for the cat population to drop by about 75%. Not going to happen so long as people see them as adorable rather than as a danger to the environment.
You know, there’s a reason I call my cat the Evil Cat.
Recently, remote cameras in our city show coyotes roaming the streets at night. They surely love cats.
We have a feral cat that started coming to our backdoor a year or so ago. My partner feeds him…we think it’s a male…sometimes several times a day. Sometimes he disappears for a day or two. She’s tried to lure him into the house, but he’s very cautious. He’s touched her finger tip with his nose a couple of times. He and another neighbors cat who comes around do prey on the birds, but not a lot and we have tons of birds in about a dozen species which we also feed. We had four cats who were mostly outside cats in San Francisco, and we had tons of birds and other things (eg rats) that the cats preyed on there as well.
I understand that feral cats can be devastating to bird populations, particularly in isolated environments such as islands. Our cats may be exceptions. In any case we can’t get this cat in the house and so feeding him might spare some birds.
The one sad note is that the presence of the cat in our backyard means that the coveys of quail we had coming around now and then have disappeared. While we have other ground feeders in our yard (towhees, juncos, sparrows, and seasonal robins), they don’t seem as perturbed by the cat as the quail. Perhaps that’s because they nest in the trees rather than on the ground like quail.
My three cats have never set foot (paw?) outside of our house. They do love to sit in sunny windows and watch birds and squirrels. That is as close to nature they ever get.
Safety for any small pet is a real concern where we live. We’ve had mountain lions and bobcats sauntering down our street. Coyotes have trotted alongside my husband’s bike when he rides. Eagles, hawks and other predatory birds often circle over our patio. I’ve heard that there is speculation that a source of e coli in salad vegetables might well be from wildlife defecating in the fields as they pass through. Combined with the Avian flu, could this mean that wildlife could easily spread the virus to humans through our food?
That being said, I disagree about domestic cats being such a danger to small wildlife. Most cat owners around here keep their cats in, for all of the reasons listed above. However, I’ve watched predatory birds scoop up gophers from my back yard, which I cheer. I’ve also watched a murder of crows bring down a dove from a wire while his/her mate watched and screamed.
I watched a single crow attack a bluejay on my lawn and eat it there.
One recent spring a pair of jays had a nest in the big oak just outside our bedroom window. I was awakened to the 6am feeding time every morning. One morning I was awakened to the sound of a murder of crows raiding that nest. I can’t un-remember hearing the screams of those baby birds and those of their poor parents.
At least in our neighborhood, it’s the crows destroying our local songbirds, not our cats.
My last three cats never caught a single bird.
They weren’t hunter cats, they were old, and they just didn’t care.
They almost never caught mice either.
The current cat is 18 years old.
She goes out once or twice a day for 20 minutes, never goes too far, and mostly just sleeps a lot.
The CDC’s information about bird flu abruptly vanished? Hmm. Like all good autocrats, is Trump trying to control the flow of important information? If bird flu explodes into the next pandemic, will we ever know its full extent? Where will we go to learn that five million died? How many of us are willing to search 50 state health databases to do the arithmetic? Trump’s probably thinking to himself, don’t lay this at my feet again. Oh, and I don’t give a shit about any of you. If I fall ill, I have access to the best antivirals.
Will the hallmark of Trump II be another pandemic, or an abundance of plane crashes?
Both of mine are strictly indoors. The world is huge and a cat is small; I will not take a risk.
PZ wrote: By the way, notice the mention that this was on the CDC website until it was abruptly removed. We can’t trust any of our major health institutions any more, I guess.
I reply: So true, the MUMP cult** has destroyed what was left of any factual system that would gather complete data and warn us about all the real disease dangers.
Our cats were always only indoors. There are too many dangers, physical and biological in the ‘real world’. We didn’t want them to end up spreading a disease to us and then dying or to end up an hors d’oeuvre for a coyote.
The Martha and the Vandellas song is now constantly playing as background music in my mind: ‘Nowhere to run to, baby. Nowhere to hide’
** MUsk+truMP – professor Snyder’s new term. I like it.
Just in time is another story about the bird flu.
The cheery title sums it up.
Bhadelia: “The lesson “that we keep learning every single time is that if we’d acted earlier, it would have been a smaller problem,” she said.”
Raven
How do you know? Do you watch them all the time?
They don’t go out much.
They don’t go far from the house. They rarely even get off the deck.
They never hunt anything, much less birds.
And there are never any dead birds lying around.
These are old house cats. They won’t eat a mouse or bird when they have a bowl of dry food and a bowl of wet food.
The media has run away with a few “cats are killing all the birds” stories over the years, but my understanding is those should probably be taken with a fair amount of skepticism. See, e.g., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9794845/
“More research needed”, of course, but my takeaway is that at least in “normal” circumstances, your cat is not actually such a ruthlessly efficient hunter as to instantly render local bird populations extinct. Most continental bird populations can probably sustain predation by reasonable numbers of domestic and feral cats just fine.
Which is not to say cats haven’t done any damage anywhere, just that those cases appear to be the exception, not the rule. They’ll involve additional aggravating factors, like prior habitat destruction stress, isolated populations, or unusually dense concentrations of cats.
If you just live in the ‘burbs somewhere, rather than, say, on a small tropical island or sensitive wetlands or something, you probably don’t need to worry too much about your pet cat going outside now and then. (Not about the birds going extinct, anyway. Sounds like you DO need to start worrying about your cat bringing home bird flu…)
The answer is obvious isn’t it? Trump wants to bury his remarks about grabbing women by the pussy so he’s ordered all variants of the word removed from government sites.
@2. Giliell : “Unpopular opinion: cats don’t belong outside. It’s bad for wildlife, it’s dangerous for the cats and it’s plainly being an asshole to your neighbours who neither signed up for cat shit in their garden or dismembered mice on their terrace.”
It’s not that unpopular an opinion. Aside from the preferences of the cat, it’s reasonable and makes a lot of sense. It’s better for them – much safer, better for wildlife and for neighbourly peace. I agree.
I have and am owned by my cat. Soppiest, most affectionate one I’ve ever had. I’ve had cats (& dogs & sometimes guinea pigs & other domesticated species) – or they’ve had me, most of my life and I absolutely love them. They are family. They’ve kept me relatively sane(~ish) even. Nothing quite so soothing as a purring cat settled happily on your lap. Now, my cat, which was adopted from a shelter and formerly allowed outside, is an indoor cat – especially after the neighbours caught her red-pawed poaching their fish from their fishpond!
I try very hard to keep her inside and mainly succeed, She does occasionally make a bolt for the door and manage to escape. She can move incredibly fast for a big fat cat when she wants to. Once outside she’s extremely difficult to catch but does come back inside after not too long a time. This doesn’t happen very often and I do try very hard to make sure she stays in.
I’ve also had a specially constructed outdoor enclosure where she has access to a skywalk and a section of netted off earth and lawn outside added to my house. Pricy but really good for her and thus me and other neighbours also with a cat have something similar. It’s a bit like some of the ones shown here :
https://catsafeenclosures.com.au/skywalks%2Fledges
FWIW. She loves it and it works well.
I strongly suspect that in the future in my area cats will be required to be indoor cats by law. I think that’s reasonable. Australia certainly has a major problem with feral ones. Plus domestic ones allowed to act like ferals and go outside when its clearly less safe and worse for them (had outdoor cats before some of which were killed on the road & some who’ve had injuries from catfights) and a major issue with native wildlife.
@19: This.
Nathan Winograd has covered this and more animal welfare groups have as well. The biggest factor in the decrease of birds? Humans. Anthropogenic climate disruption, large scale industrial farming practices, usage of pesticides, destruction of habitats, construction of skyscrapers which causes massive amounts of fatal window strikes for migrating flocks. Humans are the massive problem here, not the cats.
One of my cats likes sitting on the balcony if I’m on the balcony, and comes inside immediately if I go inside. My other cat likes roaming right to the property line, but no further that I’ve seen. The latter has brought home a mouse once, and lemmings twice, but never birds — she likes watching them from inside and stalking them through the window, but outside she acts terrified of them. So I’m reasonably confident she actually doesn’t hunt birds.
Still, they aren’t going outside to get killed by bird flu this year. (They’re also old, so they’re less interested in roaming.)
These are now common in the USA as well.
We call them catios.
Cats seem to like them because they can be outside but still feel safe.
I have something similar for my cats.
The yard is completely fenced to keep out any mega fauna. We have dogs, coyotes, foxes, and raccoons around where I live.
CDC: Felt acute, might delete later.