Cuddling With Your Cat Or Dog Could Make You Sick

If your pet settles down on your bed for a long, cozy nights sleep, you could be exposing yourself to some truly nasty diseases, according to experts.

This news could affect millions of Americans, and millions of pets. More than 60 percent of American households have pets, and anywhere from 14 percent to 62 percent of those households have a furry buddy sleeping in their beds.

Bruno Chomel, a veterinarian at the University of California-Davis, and coauthor Ben Sun, the chief veterinarian of the Californina Department of Public Health, combed existing data to come up with a list of disease pet owners might find themselves saddled with.

Among them: chagas disease, which can cause serious digestive and heart conditions; and cat-scratch fever, with symptoms of swollen lymph nodes, fever, headache, fatigue and a decreased appetite, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control. (Cat-scratch fever can develop from a scratch by an infected cat, and the CDC says most cats show no symptoms, so theres no way to tell if the feline is infected.) The third illness is the scariest: the plague, as in the bubonic plague.

Not surprisingly, the study is drawing hisses from pet owners and even vets, who say that sensible precautions like washing your hands after playing with pets, as well as regular exams, can forestall any illnesses. And pet owners say their animal companions have slept in their beds for years with no complications whatsoever.

But Chomel, who specializes in the study of disease transmission between animals and humans, is holding firm, saying that while the risk is low, it is there, especially for people with weak immune system.

I think pets should not go beyond next to the bed, Chomel says. Having a stuffed animal in the bed is fine, but not a real one.