Still friends, girl and cat who gave her meningitis
Baby drank from bottle pet had licked
LOCKED in a loving embrace with her favourite pet, smiling Sparkle Anderson is a picture of childhood happiness.
But while the three-year-old now counts Chesney the cat as her best friend, the animal could just as easily have been her killer.
For only weeks after her birth, the youngster was left fighting for her life when she caught a rare strain of meningitis from the animal. Potentially fatal bacteria were passed on when she drank from a baby’s bottle that Chesney had licked.
Gravely ill, the little girl was hours from death by the time she arrived at hospital. But once Sparkle had made a full recovery, her mother Chelsea-Ann Dodd decided her daughter should still be allowed contact with the ginger tom when she returned home.
Sparkle and Chesney have now developed a closer bond than her mother could ever have imagined.
Playing with the cat last night, Sparkle said: ‘I love Chesney so much – he is my best friend.’
Miss Dodd, 21, said she was ‘ consumed with guilt’ when doctors revealed that the meningitis – which
‘She’s besotted with him’
can lead to brain damage and blood poisoning – was most likely caused by bacteria in the cat’s saliva.
Doctors at Musgrove Park Hospital, Somerset, told the promotions assistant that Sparkle was only the 39th person in the world known to have developed meningitis from the pasteurella multocida strain.
It is common in many animals, including cats and dogs, and can be transferred to humans through bites, scratches and saliva. But it is rare for it to develop into meningitis in humans.
Describing the experience as ‘frightening’, Miss Dodd said she took careful measures to keep her daughter out of contact with the cat and was surprised that the animal could carry such a disease.
She said: ‘I was, and still am, enormously protective over Sparkle. I was particularly careful not to leave her and Chesney alone together. My fear was that Chesney would fall asleep on top of her because she was warm and smother her.’
‘I’d never heard of cats transferring such serious diseases to children, so when I found out that Chesney was the source of Sparkle’s infection, I almost couldn’t believe it. Even though the chances of it happening were so small, I still wondered whether I could have done anything differently to prevent it.’
The mother of one feared she was ‘going to lose’ Sparkle when she was admitted to the hospital in November 2010, describing the situation as ‘one of the worst experiences of my life’.
Miss Dodd, of Winsham, Somerset, first became concerned about her daughter’s health when she became increasingly bad-tempered and overheated at three weeks old.
She eventually took her daughter to hospital – and was shocked to discover that Sparkle had meningitis. Miss Dodd said: ‘It broke my heart to see her hooked up to so many wires. When they told me she had meningitis, I felt sick. It did not make any sense. She was just three weeks old and very vulnerable. It was unreal and very frightening too. I was told she could have died within hours if I hadn’t brought her in.’
After Sparkle’s month-long stay in hospital, Chesney was sent to live with her grandmother Sue, who lives nearby. But during her frequent visits, Sparkle is almost inseparable from her pet. Miss Dodd said. ‘She’s absolutely besotted with him and I think the feeling’s mutual because he’s very affectionate towards her.
‘I’ve been told it’s perfectly safe for Sparkle to spend time with Chesney, which is a relief because they’ve really become best friends.’
RSPCA chief veterinary officer James Yeates said transmission of the disease f rom cats to humans is extremely rare and that people should not be unduly alarmed.
Last month, it was revealed that four people had been infected with tuberculosis after an outbreak in the Home Counties. Two of the victims, Jessica Livings, 19, and her mother Claire, 40, are thought to have caught the disease from a wound on their kitten Onyx.
Jessica was forced to undergo emergency lung surgery after suffering hallucinations, fever and dramatic weight loss.
It is thought that the TB originated from badgers who had bitten seven of the nine cats involved in the outbreak.