How a Pandemic Takes Wing

Link: How a Pandemic Takes Wing.

The next thing to worry about: sleeping with your cat.

Seems that as the migrating wild birds infected with H5N1 make it across the Bering Strait, our farmed poultry might not come in contact with these birds, but the hunting house cat may.

From this Business Week online article:

What keeps some scientists up at night is the 75 million household cats, plus the 40 to 60 million feral cats roaming the countryside, some of which are sure to eat infected birds. "If it gets into cats in this country it will spread like crazy," warns Larry Glickman, a professor of epidemiology at Purdue University School of Veterinarian Medicine. "Many of these cats sleep in bed with their owners. The potential that they could spread it to humans is very large."

This is not keeping me up at night.