I am a Mighty Bug Hunter!
My name is Cleo. I live in Grand Rapids, MI. I live inside the house with 3 other cats. My mom is a vet. She doesn’t let me outside because she says there are too many risks in our area between traffic and getting into fights with other cats in our neighborhood. I know I would win those fights but she doesn’t trust me! So, instead I like to hunt in our house for bugs. We have air conditioning, but we still get some mosquitoes, moths, and other flying toys in the house periodically. Sometimes the mosquitoes bite me, but I don’t care. I keep hoping we get a bat in the house so I can catch a big flying toy- my mom says she sees that several times a year in her patients.
My favorites though are the bugs that crawl on the ground. Spiders, sow bugs, the occasional cricket and other creepy crawlies give me hours of entertainment. After I catch them and play with them for a while, I like to eat them. (I even caught a mouse last year and left the best part (the head) for my mom. She wasn’t too thrilled. Sometimes I get no appreciation for all my efforts. Sigh.
Most of the time my mom never even sees what I am hunting as I find the basement and other out of the way spots are the best places to find my prey. When she sees me playing with what I catch, my mom usually takes them away from me before I eat them. She says I can get parasites and other infections from them. I am not sure what parasites are, but mom says they can make me sick. Those parasites are why she keeps me on a monthly parasite medication year around, and keeps my vaccines up to date even though I don’t go outside. She says I can even get some parasites from walking through dirt or digging in potting soil and then washing my feet afterward. This is what she says I can get from:
- Mosquitoes- heartworms
- Fleas- tapeworms, Bartonella infection (cat scratch fever)
- Mice and other rodents such as voles, rats: tapeworms, roundworms, lung flukes, and toxoplasmosis
- Earthworms- roundworms
- Cockroaches- roundworms
- Snails and slugs- lungworms
- Crayfish- lung flukes
- Ticks- Bob cat fever (Cytauxzoon felis), Ehrlichia, Lyme disease
- Dirt and potting soil- roundworms, hookworms
- Outdoor water- Giardia
- Bats- rabies
I figure I am not going to worry about those things because my mom does the worrying for me and keeps me protected with the monthly parasite preventative and my yearly vaccines. Bugs of the world be very afraid- Cleo the bug hunter is on the prowl!
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