Warning: Don’t Lick Your Pet

Getting up close and personal with our pets feels natural and fun. I'll admit that I kiss my dog Maya on the nose every day, and often touch noses with my kitty Thor. Some might find this disgusting, but I love the close interaction with my critters. Still, research released this week in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases reminds us that there are certain lines to draw when cuddling with our animals.

A paper by Emily Myers, Sarah Ward, and Joseph Myers examined three cases in which a person providing palliative care to a dying pet contracted a serious disease. A zoonotic bacteria (a bacteria that can be passed from a nonhuman animal to a human) called Pastue

rella multocida

In the first case, a 55 year old woman had been providing palliative care to her terminally ill dog. She was dropper-feeding honey to her dog, and apparently was sharing the honey and the dropper. "One lick for you; one lick for me," or something like that. A few days after this co-feeding, she contracted a nasty illness that sent her to the ER. Blood cultures revealed the presence of the Gram-negative bacilli P. multocida

The second case involved a 63 year old woman, who showed up at the ER with similar symptoms. Again, the bug was identified as P. multocida. Two weeks prior to her illness, the woman reported caring for her dying cat. She had held, caressed, and kissed the cat during the last week of its life.

In the third case, a 66 year old woman became infected with P. multocida after holding, kissing, and hugging her dying cat and letting the cat lick her hands and arms.

(All three patients recovered.)

P. multocida is the same bacteria acquired from dog and cat bites and scratches. According to the researchers, the organism is carried in the oral cavity of nearly half of all dogs and more than three-fourths of all cats. Kissing pets is one known form of transmission, so I may revise my approach to cuddling Maya and Thor.

The researchers don't tell us whether dying animals are more likely to be infected with P. multocida and thus more likely to pass bacteria to humans, but this seems to be the implication of their report. Maybe dying animals have higher rates of infection because their immune systems are compromised. But the researchers do worry that as more and more people choose to provide hospice care for their dying pets, rather than or at least prior to euthanizing, health care workers may see increasing rates of infection.

So, my advice for the day: Do not lick your dog or cat, particularly if said animal is dying or dead. And maybe hold off on sharing that ice cream cone. Do, please, give your animals lots of love and attention, especially if you have a dying pet. But use common sense.