<p>Hmmm… The exercise I get from chasing after my kitties is definitely beneficial. Lower stress? I’m not so sure that owing a cat results in lower stress level.
Now excuse me for a moment - I have to extract my baby cat from the TV cabinet again! :)</p>
<p>Oops, this was intended for the Cafe - the touchpad on my laptop is acting up again.</p>
<p>Well, we should be good then. I don’t think there was a time when I didn’t have at least one cat. I wonder if more is better ;). Right now we have three. And then add in a very needy St. Bernard. I don’t know, but sometimes the stress level seems to increase!</p>
<p>Yeah, nothing relaxes me for a good night’s sleep like the sound of a hairball being deposited in on my closet floor! I just float off into a blissful stress-free state…</p>
<p>Cats are great fun…better than what’s on TV, most of the time! </p>
<p>But a friend said they can’t let their cat outside because it will pick up some disease and transmit it to their young child. Was their pediatrician being overly cautious?</p>
<p>Not to be a downer on this thread or anything!</p>
<p>kitty56,
I think you must be the only other person in the world with three cats and one needy St. Bernard! How old is your big dog? Ours is 8 (old man in St. Bernard years). He’s really starting to decline (can’t walk for long now, cataracts) but the sweetest dog I’ve ever known.</p>
<p>Outdoor cats can carry more toxoplasmosis, a parasite not a worm. Toxo infections are a problem for pregnancy women and young children, but to be honest, they are not common infections. Pregnant women should not change litter boxes/should not handle litter boxes, and children should not have any access to them either.</p>
<p>momof2inca ~ We have a female that we adopted through a rescue group that goes to kill shelters down in KY. They said she was about 3 and if that is true then she is about 5 now. She is very sweet, but VERY needy. She LOVES my H and won’t leave his side when he is around. She will chase or bark at the cats, but they have figured out that she is much too slow to catch them. By the time she could even get herself up if she is lying down, they can be long gone. One nice thing is she is not a high energy dog! Unfortunately, we have one cat who has never accepted this dog, although loved our previous dog. So this cat lives in the basement by her own choice. S’s bedroom is down there so when he is away at college, I try to go down and spend time with her.</p>
<p>How does your St. cope with the So. Cal. heat? The heat and humidity in summer here is tough for her.</p>
<p>Wow - we should all be VERY heart healthy at our house. We have 5 cats, including a recently rescued kitten. Plus 2 dogs just for the fun of it!!</p>
<p>austinmtmom, it is nice to read that someone has more pets than our household
When I was pregnant with my second child , I had a blood test to determine whether or not I had been exposed to toxoplasmosis. I had ! no problems though as they said I had probably been sick some time before and brushed it off as a flu. I did dig in the flower gardens, which I am sure were visited byt the neighborhood cats.
I have 4 indoor and two outdoor cats…they are all so different and my husband thinks I am nuts because I can distinguish their voices and know who is jumping on the bed in the dark…they are funny critters</p>
<p>kitty56,
We live on the coast so it’s not too hot here most of the time. There are days when the east winds come in off the desert and it’s just unbearable. I feel sorry for him. We adopted him at about three years also, from my sister. I never would have picked a St. and in fact don’t think it’s fair for them to be in warm climates. Plus, he lives outdoors (he is huge, slobbery and sheds all the time, so there is no way to have him in the house and still maintain a semblance of cleanliness) and he doesn’t get enough attention. He is very mellow and old now and sleeps most of the time though.</p>
<p>One of our cats is isolated from the others by choice, too, and living in S’s bedroom! So we have that in common, too. :)</p>
<p>My CC surfing activities are frequently interrupted by my young feline friends. When my old cats died last year, I was devastated. I decided that I wouldn’t get another cat for a while. H tricked me into stopping at a local shelter to drop off some cat food donations. An hour or so later we were walking out of the shelter with a cardboard box. Inside the box there was a curious calico kitten with big ears, long legs and a tail longer than the kitten’s body… Another youngster joined her in a few month - a tiny palm-sized kitten rescued from a hoarder’s house. This poor baby was in a pretty bad shape, she was infested with worms and had some sort of a blood infection. She is doing much, much better now that she’s been though a series of deworming treatments and several courses of antibiotics, but is still so tiny, and she is so flexible I call her a slinky-cat! Maybe I’m not used to 5-lb cats And, of course, we have a dog - an older German shepherd gentleman.</p>
<p>Aw, Bunsen Burner, what great stories! Most of mine have come here because they are strays. The last to join the group just literally showed up on my back porch one morning crying at 6:00 am. He was about 10 mos. old and SO thin. It took us a long time to gain his trust to even pet him. Now you can’t get rid of him lol! And he has not stopped talking. He is talking to me now as a matter of fact!</p>
<p>Basement cat came here because our previous dog found a litter of feral kittens at my parents’ house and had to slobber on some. Well, I guess mama cat didn’t like the smell of dog on this one because she took the other three kittens, moved them (and they were so young and tiny, that she would have had to carry them in her mouth) and left, leaving this last one behind. So of course, we couldn’t leave this one there to die, so we took it home. I swear she grew up thinking our dog was her mother. That is why she was so devastated when we lost that dog. She was a real tough, self confident cat until we lost “her mother”. She seemed to lose all that when we lost him. Now she and S have a special bond living together in the basement.</p>
<p>I always say “nothing more that I have to feed or clean up after”, but if something showed up, it would never be turned away!</p>
<p>Baby Cat got a clean bill of health and was spayed today. Yipee, I’m looking forward to dealing with a cat with a plastic cone around her head. I’m 100% positive her older “sister” will not recognize her and will have a hissy fit. Sigh.</p>
<p>Husband had a cat when we got married; I am allergic to cats and lived with that one for 13 years, during that time I developed asthma. No more cats here! My kids all like cats and may have them when they are on their own, which will complicate my visiting them. The article does say similar effects have been found with dog owners. I’ll have to make do with the guinea pigs. I am OK with them as long as I wash immediately after touching them.</p>
