Bad, Bad Kitty!

Sure, they're cute and sweet, but snuggling up with your pets could result in your acquiring'or reacquiring'a drug-resistant staph infection. A case study in The New England Journal of Medicine has shown that a German woman's recurrent methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections were the result of repeated reinfections from her cat, which carried colonies of the bacteria. And it's not just cats: Virtually all household pets can be colonized with MRSA. So if you've got a MRSA infection that won't heal or keeps recurring, have your pet tested'and, if needed, treated with antibiotics.