Arrgh, Plop!

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm a cat lover. I like dogs, don't get me wrong. But I prefer cats. Just the way I'm wired.

So today's news from the science journal Nature, has me worried.

Cats are significantly more likely to catch and pass on bird flu than has generally been thought and could help the virus mutate to cause a human pandemic, Dutch scientists said yesterday.

Albert Osterhaus of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, author of this study, has stated the findings make it important for cats to be confined indoors in areas where the disease is endemic.

“As soon as you have birds that become sick, cats are very effective at catching and eating them,” he said. “Our advice is that in endemic areas you should keep cats indoors and dogs on the (leash).”

"People tend to take good care of sick pets,” Osterhaus noted. “It is unlikely that people will get too close to a chicken, but many people do with cats.”

This close interaction with a possibly infected pet is an easy way for the H5N1 virus to make it into your home, even if human to human transmission has not occured.

Dogs, too, have been implicated as possible carriers of the disease, but more research is needed.

In Indonesia, bird flu is called Plop by the natives. Named after the noise a bird makes when it falls dead from a tree.

The number of cats infected in Indonesia is so great, that it too has a name. Arrgh, Plop. It seems, the last thing a cat does before it falls dead from a tree, is to scream.

Take this seriously, folks. And begin thinking about how you will deal with keeping your beloved pets indoors . . . perhaps forever. There is no way to know how long the bird flu will stay endemic in birds. This may be the `new normal'.

And while keeping your cats and dogs indoors may seem cruel, it could not only save your pet's life, it could save your's as well.