If you love your cat, feel free to hug it and pet it, but be careful not to kiss it. That’s because kissing a cat could get you infected with cat scratch disease. Symptoms typically involve fatigue, fever and swollen lymph nodes, but in a small number of cases, cat-scratch disease can cause the brain to swell or infect the heart and actually kill you.

The bacteria can enter your body through your nose, eyes or mouth, so the CDC recommends washing your hands after touching a cat. Definitely don’t let your cat lick you if you have an open wounds, but that also means don’t kiss your cat either.

 

Most likely cats have discovered that they can not only infect people with diseases, but they can threaten to kill them as well. Now if you won’t obey your cat because he or she’s cute, you will obey your cat because he or she may kill you.

To read more about cat scratch disease, click here.