Is it safe for a cat to be with a Covid patient?

Question

I recently tested positive for Covid and I’ve been isolating myself in one of the bedrooms. This is the same room where my kitty sleeps and basically calls it her own territory.

She meows, yowls and scratches on the door to be let inside. Is it safe for her to be inside here? My wife is the other person in the house, along with my three other cats. None of the other cats have been trying to get inside. Also, this one is very attached to me. It’s heartbreaking to hear her yowl outside the door.

EDIT: My wife has also tested positive. We along with our cats are now isolated in our apt. They are indoor cats and we are taking precautions by sanitising beds we/they sleep on, using gloves and masks while feeding them and not petting them at all (they aren’t happy about that) and generally maintaining physical separation from them. So far none of them have shown any unusual behaviour. Thank you for all your immensely useful answers and comments!

EDIT 2: We have since recovered and tested negative (tested via RT-PCR tests and not the rapid antigen test). We didn’t test our cats but from what we see, they seem to be fine. No abnormal fluid discharges etc. The two older cats (5 and 6 yo) were quiet for a few days but they have since returned to their normal activity levels. The two younger ones (8 mos and 1 yo) were relentlessly active through our entire ordeal. All in all I think the older ones may have been infected but have since recovered and the younger ones were not. Again, this is purely based on empirical evidence and no tests. All in all we lived through this to tell the tale!

Answer 1

TLDR: Not really.

While the risk is low, COVID-19 seems to be fairly indiscriminate, with documented cases of dogs, cats, zoo otters and farmed minks getting it. Most corona virus (There's a whole family of similar viruses like SARS and MERS) outbreaks are pretty certainly zoonotic (they come from animals in the first place), so extra caution is a good idea.

The CDC advises you don't, and interestingly advises safe distancing for animals:

Keep cats indoors when possible and do not let them roam freely outside.

Walk dogs on a leash at least 6 feet away from others to protect them from interacting with people outside the household.

They also indicate that the symptoms are at worst mild, or affected animals may be asymptomatic.

Pets infected with this virus may or may not get sick. Pets that do have symptoms usually have mild illness that can be taken care of at home.

Which of course leads to the possibility of it being spread via your pet to other people and animals.

The Mayo clinic concurs, advising:

Isolate yourself from everyone else, including your pet. If possible, have another person in your household care for your pet.

Essentially, please treat any mammalian pet as at risk of contracting COVID-19. While you love your cat, waiting for the necessary time is both for your safety as well as for your cat.

Answer 2

Advice from the UK government is similar to that of the CDC mentioned by Journeyman Geek (emphasis mine):

If you, or a member of your household, have symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19) you should self-isolate for 10 days.

If you’re self-isolating you should make alternative arrangements to take care of your animal’s welfare. You should ask for support from others who are not self-isolating or use professional services.

Whilst the risk to her own well-being is small, having contact with her would provide another possible vector to spread the disease to other members of your household or, for an outdoor cat, members of other households (via other animals).

Cats are creatures of habit, and so she is understandably frustrated by the disruption to her routine and loss of what she sees as her territory. The good news is that cats' natural response to illness is to hide and isolate themselves and so you isolating is a response she will be able to understand (especially if you were showing symptoms prior to isolating).

To deal with the plaintive yowling, I would recommend that your wife puts extra effort into engaging with her (with whatever combination of playing and petting she wants) to distract her so that she can adapt to this new situation as quickly as possible.

I hope you get through this soon, and are able to look forward to seeing her delighted face when you leave isolation again.

Answer 3

There are two possible scenarios:

1. Not everyone in your household is infected with COVID. In this case the cats could serve as vectors for the virus to spread to other members of your family so you should avoid contact with them and have other members of your family treat them as infected just in case. This means always wearing a mask around your cat or when cleaning up after them, at least for a couple of weeks.

2. Everyone in your household is currently infected (this seems to be the case according to your updated). In this case it doesn't really matter if the cats get infected as according to clinical studies they're not susceptible to serious disease:

   We report that cats are highly susceptible to infection, with a prolonged period of oral and nasal viral shedding that is not accompanied by clinical signs, and are capable of direct contact transmission to other cats. These studies confirm that cats are susceptible to productive SARS-CoV-2 infection, but are unlikely to develop clinical disease.

   So I'd let the cats hang out with everyone in the household without wearing masks, especially given how supportive animals can be while humans are sick. Your only concern would be to make sure that someone is able to take care of the animals if your symptoms worsen and you're unable to attend to their needs consistently.

In both scenarios I'd make sure that the cats are unable to leave the house for 14 days as doing so could result in the virus spreading around to other people.

Answer 4

Maybe. I think it's only for you to discern.

How old is the eldest person the cat, or those around it, will come into contact within the next 14 days?

If you, your wife, and everyone else is well under 65 years old, you are safe (statistically, nothing is 100%) to be with your cat. This doesn't preclude your cat carrying the disease and infecting others in your household - but, again statistically speaking, the flu is more deadly for a vast majority of people. Covid is very strongly biased towards serious complications in those over 65, even more skewed to those over 75, or those with pre-existing conditions.

As DRF says in his comments "I know I very strongly prefer to be able to be with my wife when she has the flu or cold, (which both have generally mild symptoms) to the reasonable chance of catching the disease from her."

COVID is caused by SARS-CoV-2, a coronavirus, one strain of viruses commonly referred to as 'the common cold'. In a typical year coronaviruses account for roughly 20% of common cold cases. COVID is a uniquely mutated coronavirus, and it was very scary for a long time because it was novel and acted on the human body in unexpected ways - but we know and understand it now. Most importantly, we know that while far deadlier than a typical virus of this type, it is effectively still just a common cold in almost all cases of healthy individuals under 65.

To be clear, I don't disagree with the other answers in the slightest, just mentioning if you fall into a specific subset of the population the idea of spreading it to your cat and wife may not actually affect either's safety. Though very seriously could affect their quality of life in the near term. If anything I'd say this should be your wife's (and any others in your household's) call (assuming you also meet the other listed criteria, which I understand isn't exactly commonplace).

Call me a crazy conspiracy theorist if you will. Just here to (hopefully) help you reconsider and stop living in fear if it's unnecessary. If you're over 65, have any pre-existing conditions, are immunocompromised in any way, or will be in contact with anyone who falls into that category over the next 14 days, your best bet is it to ignore this entire post, as it doesn't apply to you. However, there are subsets of the population that don't fall into that category, and if that's you and I were in your shoes I'd show my cat some love and enjoy the purrs during recovery. (I'm also young, live alone, and don't come into contact with anyone 'at risk' in my day-to-day life - everyone is different!)

TL;DR; use common sense, covid is serious, but there are well documented understandings and a majority of precautions published broadly are blanket advice to assist an uneducated public in preventing the spread of the disease on a large scale. If you educate yourself and think things through, you can make the best choices for your own life (which still may very well be following CDC or UK gov guidelines to the letter).

Hope you feel better soon regardless!

Answer 5

It is SAFE for your cat and there is no evidence that would suggest otherwise.

According to www.scmp.com:

“Samples collected from the cat and the dog by the department tested positive for the Covid-19 virus. However, neither of the animals has shown any symptoms at present. The AFCD will continue to closely monitor them and conduct repeated testing.”

Now, for the context: RT-PCR tests (the most commonly used type of tests for this) are triggered to give "positive" result after just detecting the mere presence of fragments of the genes of the virus, not presence of active viruses themselves; it means that even if the immune system has already completely destroyed all the active viruses, and left only inactive and harmless viral remains, RT-PCR test will still tell that the tested subject is "positive". It goes for both you in your situation, and the pets mentioned in the quoted article.

Our immune system has been evolving constantly fighting off pathogens for millions of years, and while it is not perfect, it is really quite good at it. It defends us from pathogenic intruders via destroying them; however, it does not do it via Chicago overcoat method of dressing them in cement shoes and dumping them into large water bodies without leaving any trace of evidence; instead, it destroys them in less "refined" way which leaves obvious signs and messy remains. And this is fine; our immune system cells are not criminals who would have to hide the evidence, and since all that messy remains do not present any threat to us anymore, there is no need of prioritizing getting rid of them - as a result, they could remain present in our system for WEEKS.

Now, in this context, the problem is that RT-PCR tests will detect all those mauled and harmless pathogen "corpses" and label you as "positive" - classifying you in the same exact status as someone who is losing the battle with the virus and is actively spreading active and infectious viruses.

Next important topic: animals don't play any significant role in spreading this virus. None of the credible sources suggest that cats or dogs were even remotely responsible for contributing to the overall spread of this virus anywhere in the world. The virus is spread mostly by aerosols which travel up to 30 meters before landing. Both dogs and cats have not shown any symptoms of illness. "Positive but asymptomatic", translated from the creeping newspeak, means "healthy" - no more, no less.