Each year in the U.S., an average of seven people still get the plague. The most common is bubonic, though they’re all
caused by the same bacteria. But it’s “really a wildlife disease,” biologist Nils Christian Stenseth
told Pacific Standard earlier this year. It’s caused by bacteria that likes to live in rodents, though within the past year,
three cats in Wyoming have been diagnosed with the plague, too. Flea bites are the main way it spreads to humans, according to
a fact sheet from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You can also get it from touching, skinning, being coughed on—or presumably, wholesale ingesting—an animal with the plague. “Especially sick cats,” notes the fact sheet, which means the Wyoming cat owners ought to be careful. Dogs can get the plague
too, which is why the CDC further advises that you don’t let them sleep in your bed in plague-y areas of the U.S.
What are those areas? Mostly Western states. Plague arrived here at the beginning of the 20th century via rats hitching rides on ships from Asia, where it spread to rodents in states including California and New Mexico (a location in which I have recently snuggled my dog!). The prairie dog can also get the plague, in fact, it is the CDC fact sheet’s poster-animal for the infection. The Badlands National Park in South Dakota where plague
was detected in the animals in 2009, is outfitted with dramatic
signs that warn “PRAIRIE DOGS HAVE
PLAGUE!” Visitors are advised not to get too close to the cuddly critters.
