Woman Goes Blind After Being Licked By Her Cat

01 Jun, 2015 by Jennifer Van Laar

Print this article Font size -16+

Jane Walters of Toledo, Ohio, is now blind in one eye, and attributes it to…her cat licking her eye.

‘I looked in the mirror and I thought I had pink eye, or something,’ Walters said. ‘I went to the doctors and they couldn’t figure out for some time what it was.’

For more than a month, doctors were baffled by the condition, but ultimately attributed the woman’s sudden blindness to one thing: her cat.

‘They discovered I had something called cat scratch,’ she told the station.

Cat-scratch disease is a bacterial infection spread by kittens and cats, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The disease can be transmitted when a cat licks a person’s open wound, or scratches or bites a person hard enough to break the skin.

Walters told WTOL that her vision loss is nonreversible. ‘It’s a big handicap,’ Walters said of her condition. ‘There are a lot of things you have to do differently.’

Kittens younger than 1 year are more likely to carry the bacteria and to spread it to people.

Walters said her experience has not stopped her from loving and owning pets, but she wants her experience to be a warning to others.

‘It’s real important,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to lose your eye sight.’