North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[david.maxwell@dal.ca]

For what it's worth, from the medical point of view the connection is not obvious.  Urinary tract infections in women generally are an "auto-infection".  That is, the causitive organism originates in the gut, and the bug in the bladder is identical in type to the one in the gut of the individual woman. (We all have our own distinct "clones" of E. coli etc.)  You don't "catch" the infection from others, (including cats); you infect yourself.  (Just why some (many!) women get infected periodically is a whole 'nother question, but it is not a question of exposure to the infecting organism, but rather of resistance to the passage of the organism up into the bladder.)

> Did the cats in those households have untreated kidney infections?

>

>

> For what it's worth, I know lots of people with cat pans in the house

> who do not have kidney infections. (And I have serious doubts about

> the "always" in the sentence above. Nobody in the world has repeated

> kidney infections but no cats?)

>

>

> If you have repeated kidney infections with no known source, and also

> have cats, it might be worth checking this out -- including, having

> the cats checked out by a vet. However, I wouldn't automatically toss

> out either the cat pans or the cats without further evidence.