Why You DON'T Need to Give Up Your Cat When Pregnant

Ever heard of that silly rumor from friends (or even uniformed doctors!) that, "you need to give up your cat if you're pregnant!"? To give up your 4 legged family member is very extreme when all you have to do is take simple steps to prevent infection:

Cat lovers MUST remove the litter box from the area where the pregnant woman
even can breathe the air. Keeping the litter box in a bathroom with appropriate circulation is the best place. Toxoplasmosis is
spread via aerosol. The cleaning of the litter by another can cause the
parasite to become airborne and possibly infect anyone in the area. However, as you'll
see below, cat ownership is only weakly associated with toxoplasmosis in
pregnancy.  Care can be given to the changing of the litter box so that she
doesn't have to get rid of the cat. 

Owning a cat is only weakly associated with acute infection. This is
probably because cats only excrete oocysts for three weeks of their life,
and people are just as likely to be exposed to oocysts excreted by someone
else's cat. Nevertheless, it seems sensible for pregnant women with cats to
ask someone else to change the litter box daily (fresh cat feces are not
infectious).

(See abstract for more information):
http://www.uptodate.com/online/content/abstract.do?topicKey=pregcomp/16134&refNum=5,19,21