Toxoplasmosis, from a specific parasite, infects cats and their owners. It is a rare parasitic disease that affects people with weakened immune systems and pregnant women. Studies show that toxoplasmosis is transmittable when a person gets in contact with an infected cat’s pee or feces. However, should this really be a cause of concern that makes people want to distance themselves from their pets? What’s the truth behind all these questions?

What the CDC says…

The CDC is one of the most reliable sources of information when it comes to diseases, viruses, parasites, bacteria, and health. They claim that statistics of toxoplasmosis infection from your cat is not significant enough to be a source of fear. It is unlikely for owners to get exposed from their cats, but not entirely impossible. Unfortunately, they did say that humans might get the infection from eating uncooked meat or holding the soil in bare hands.

How do Cats Get Toxoplasma?

The parasite is not exclusive to cats because other animals can also get toxoplasmosis. Cats get it when they eat or lick infected small animals, or play with infected soil. Other animals can transmit the disease when they come in contact with humans or other animals. But cats are unique in a way that they can infect others by coming in contact with their poop. So aside from cleaning your cat’s litter box, you can get toxoplasmosis when you eat the infected uncooked meat of an animal.

More About Toxoplasma

Toxoplasma parasite (T. gondii) infects mammals. Animals that get infected for the first time create infectious microorganisms in their body that get transmitted to other nearby hosts. Once you or your pet gets infected, you will build an immunity from the parasite and not suffer from the symptoms that it can possibly give. Reinfection very rarely occurs.

How Toxoplasmosis Affects Pregnant Women?

When infected during pregnancy, women are at higher risk of passing the parasite to their child. Pregnant women get exposed to the parasite when they clean up after their infected cat, using their bare hands to touch the soil, eating raw or undercooked meat, or putting their hands near the mouth after getting in contact with the parasite. In this case, the baby is at risk of suffering from serious complications like birth defects, brain damage, eye problems, or possibly miscarriage. The mother, on the other hand, may experience headache, fever, body pains, redness of the eyes, or fatigue. The good news is that if the mother gets infected prior to her pregnancy, she will not pass on the disease to her child. A blood test usually confirms if the mother was infected with immunity or currently carries the disease.

Probability of Toxoplasmosis Infection in Humans

If a pregnant woman gets in contact with an infectious reproducing microorganism, transplacental transmission of the parasite to the unborn child occurs. But human infection with toxoplasmosis is fairly low because domesticated cats are not fed with commercially-packed foods. They aren’t likely to eat the flesh of an infected animal outside.

As a cat lady, you don’t need to stay away from your cat if you do get pregnant. There are a few safety precautions that you can follow to stay away from getting toxoplasmosis.
If pregnant or sick, have someone else clean your cat’s litter box or it’s better to get a self cleaning litter box
Wear gloves and thoroughly wash yourself after cleaning if there’s no one available to do it for you.
Avoid undercooked meat.
Use disposable gloves when handling your garden because you never know if your cat does their business in the soil.
Have your cat checked by a veterinarian if you want assurance.

When you do get in contact with the parasite, the incubation period of the microorganism goes from one to five days where you won’t encounter any symptoms at all. After the incubation, you might feel the symptoms mentioned above. Fortunately, the body starts building immunity from the parasite and it will eventually go away from a few weeks to a few months. One previous infection gives you the immunity you need to be free from the parasite ever bugging you again. Thus, you won’t pass on the disease to your child when you get pregnant.

And lastly, if you’ve been a cat lady for years, you’ve probably gotten infected before and you just don’t know it; then you are probably immune to it now.

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Protecting the child means creating a stable, safe, secure and caring environment in which the child feels loved and protected, and the intentions and behavior of those close to the child are dictated by a genuine concern for the child’s well-being.

The art of dealing with children is, among other things, the art of balancing freedom and control. Certain restrictions are inevitable; without restrictions, children cannot feel safe. Permissiveness generates anxiety, the child will constantly feel some kind of danger, and immaturity and lack of experience will make him or her helpless at all.

But if there are too many restrictions, if the baby is treated too strictly, put forward inconsistent disciplinary requirements, harshly punished for the slightest transgression, the child could be completely confused and completely out of control. All of this, of course, in no way contributes to the development of self-discipline and self-confidence.

Children need to be in a warm environment of people who know how to take care of each other and do not get tired of expressing their love and affection – both in words and in deeds.

The relationship between parents

An example for a child is, first of all, his parents. If father and mother often quarrel, humiliate each other and rarely show their love, children feel very insecure and anxious. As one acquaintance of mine said, “I have often watched my parents fight and quarrel. And that would have been okay, but I never saw them reconcile. It really freaked me out. For some reason, many children think that the negative emotions of the father and mother are nothing more than a reflection of the feelings that parents have for them, the children, and that they, the children, are the main culprits of family strife.

Perhaps the best thing parents can do for their children is to act so that their partner feels respected, valued, accepted, and that he or she is “on the team” and completely safe.

The Situation – Parents’ Divorce

A 16-year-old boy describes his reaction to his parents’ divorce this way:

“When my father and mother’s relationship deteriorated so much that they decided to break up their marriage of seventeen years ago, I felt terribly lonely. My father was living apart, and it had a very depressing effect on me. That was the first time I tried drugs. I was terribly angry, it hurt a lot that we couldn’t all live together like other families, and that my father was going to leave us and start a new life.

The reaction is pain.

Parents rarely notice it, but during a divorce the child feels rejected and even guilty; adults underestimate the impact of their divorce on children. If the father and mother display a negative attitude toward each other, the children are even more traumatized. Parents often hesitate to talk to their children about their problems because of guilt, fear, embarrassment, and weakness.

The reaction is help.

If a divorce can’t be avoided, there must at least be a plan of action to follow. Here is an example of such a plan:

Talk to your child privately, reassuring them that they will always be loved by both parents and not at all to blame for their divorce.

Try not to overburden the child and not to tell him or her everything at once. Consultation with a psychologist can also be very helpful.

Notes

Parental divorce has a negative impact on the child and his or her sense of security; the effects can be serious and long-lasting.

Parents can reduce the detrimental effects of divorce. We need to discuss all the difficulties together both before, during, and after the divorce process. Also – for the sake of the children – we need to stop the animosity.

Let parents not be surprised if their children get angry and refuse to talk. Embrace that anger and try to listen to everything, understand and comfort the child.

Caring, loving environment

It is common in happy families to openly show your love to your family members. In order to feel confident and safe, a child needs to see that his parents love each other and love him.

It is well known that the beginning and the end of something are very important. The beginning and the end of a day, a week, a month, a year are great occasions to show your family over and over again how much you love them. I remember one woman said that as a child her mother woke her up with a kiss and a gentle hug. And another – sadly confessed that in the morning she usually wakes her children by shouting, “Hurry up, or you’ll be late for school!”, “If you don’t make your bed before breakfast, you won’t get money for dessert!”

Signs of love and affection – hugs, kisses, smiles, tenderness at the beginning and end of the day or after a separation – contribute to a warm, positive family atmosphere, especially if not mixed with nagging and moralizing. And of course, spontaneous displays of love and affection will always come in handy and are always appropriate.

Traditions and rituals

Rooted “rituals” and traditional family holidays further strengthen a child’s sense of stability and security. In addition to the usual holidays and birthdays, you can establish new traditions together with your children. For example, once a week or once a month to have a family dinner at which everyone can share their impressions of a pleasant event. Or you could organize discussion lunches: everyone prepares an interesting message and shares it with his or her family, and then everyone expresses his or her opinions. It could be some political or sports news, an article in a magazine or newspaper, etc.

Discipline. Responsibility for their actions

Parents should be able to explain to children why certain acts are inappropriate or irresponsible, and why certain actions can have negative consequences. Thus, one mother, having found out that her child stole a toy from the store, did not begin to go into long arguments, but simply said: “In our family it is not customary to take someone’s things without asking, and it is not customary to rob others. Then she took the child to that store and – to the kid’s dismay – returned the toy to the manager, apologizing to him. The manager accepted the apology and said that if something like that happened again, he would have to go to the police.

Excessive restrictions

Arbitrary and too rigid restrictions that are not justified in language accessible to the child, or that are established without his or her participation and without discussion with the child, often lead to a “tug-of-war”. And what is typical, in such a situation both the child and the parent feel insecure.

Here are examples of excessive requirements for a fourteen-year-old:

• Go to bed at nine o’clock at night.
• Not spending pocket money on dinners at snack bars.
• Not watching TV on weekdays.
• Not calling anyone on the phone, except on Saturday-Sunday.

Excessive or inappropriate punishments

Too harsh punishments are very difficult to “impose” on the child, as he intuitively thinks they are unfair. There is little benefit from such punishments, as the child is more occupied with thoughts of parental bias. As a result, children become withdrawn and tension can arise in relations with them.

Inconsistency in punishments

If you threaten a child with punishment and then don’t punish them, children become anxious, doubtful, and stop trusting their parents. My neighbor once told his son to get out of the pool immediately because the whole family had to go somewhere in fifteen minutes. After about a quarter of an hour, the man shouted: “I’m counting to ten! If you don’t get out of the pool, we’ll leave without you.” After counting to ten, he started the count again twice more, each time repeating that this was the boy’s last chance, and adding a new threat.

If one parent has too mild a temper, and the other acts too tough, it throws the child off balance. If parents argue with each other in front of children, children feel very uncomfortable. It is much easier for a child when parents say what they think, think what they say, live amicably and generally know what they are doing.

Corporal punishment

Corporal punishment should be avoided. As a rule, it is a way of punishment for serious misdemeanors, but such punishments prevent the child from finding a way out of a difficult situation, and sometimes even cross out the very possibility of such a solution.

In addition, the child can draw the wrong conclusions. When we spank a child, he or she may well decide that abuse by a stronger person of impressive size is quite normal. Sometimes the reaction to the use of force is not immediate, but it does not become any less acute. A child who has been spanked by a school principal will not be able to do anything immediately in response. But he can come to school on Sunday and somehow make a nuisance of himself. If the child is punished by his father, he may take out his anger on his little brother or sister.

If we do not learn lessons from different situations in life, the feeling of insecurity and vulnerability in our children will never disappear. Corporal punishment can distort the very essence of parenting: physical violence can prevent a child from understanding and learning something. Ideally, the choice of punishment is made with the child’s participation, the punishment corresponds to the offense, and your child feels that you continue to love him or her. In addition, with punishment your son or daughter would do well to learn something useful. Punishment should be an element of learning, not a harsh punishment designed to cause pain and suffering.

Self-Discipline

The child must be taught self-discipline. Children should be given the opportunity to observe and experience the consequences of their own actions so that children will gradually learn to control themselves and “not to get into trouble”. Excessive tutelage on the part of parents deprives the child of such an opportunity.

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