Cats

  1. Home
  2. Home & Garden
  3. Cats
photo of Franny Syufy

Franny's Cats Blog

By Franny Syufy, About.com Guide to Cats since 1997

Cat Scratch Fever

Wednesday January 31, 2007
Dr. Vincent Iannelli, Pediatrician and About.com Guide to Pediatrics, has written a comprehensive article about a disease that is relatively unknown. Many children's parents may not have even known that their child had had that disease, because it often goes away on its own, without treatments. Cat Scratch Fever falls into the category of zoonotic diseases (diseases shared by humans and animals). Rabies is probably one of the best known of these diseases, and the Bird Flu has been in the news for over a year. Of course, toxoplasmosis is the most commonly known zoonotic disease shared by humans and cats.

Bartonella Henslae, the bacteria that causes Cat Scratch Fever, is found usually in kittens. Like human children, they often shake it off with no one even knowing they've had it. In other cases, they may suffer indefinitely with a URI (upper respiratory infection) that the standard antibiotics don't help.

Charlie was one of those kittens that the local humane society had almost given up on. Tina Camporeale details his story in a guest article for my site.

Learn More

Comments

February 1, 2007 at 3:25 pm
(1) Theresa Swallick says:

I took home a cat from the vet’s office where I worked. He would not eat unless we gave him wet food. Doctor checked his mouth and found his gums were red by his teeth and put him on Zithomax for 21 days and now is doing fine. She tested him for Bartonella and he was 4+ (high). URI is not the only thing that Bartonella causes.

Leave a Comment

Line and paragraph breaks are automatic. Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title="">, <b>, <i>, <strike>

Discuss

Community Forum

Explore Cats

More from About.com

Cats

  1. Home
  2. Home & Garden
  3. Cats

©2008 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company.

All rights reserved.