2026 UPDATE:
Our cat is currently picking up 2 or 3 small young ticks a day at the moment. Seems like another bumper year for ticks - unfortunately…
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Bumper year indeed. I found the first tick of 2026 on Robin Goodfellow at the end of January. JANUARY!
How I hate the nasty blighters…
Another mild winter means the ticks are rampant again. Our cats have been picking them up too.
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Thanks for the heads up. Haven’t seen any around here yet, but the cats have had their first Frontline of the season tonight.
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Today, I saw that there was some work on a vaccine for Lyme’s disease:
An experimental vaccine from Pfizer and Valneva reduced the risk of developing Lyme disease by more than 70%, according to newly released data. Though results appear to have missed a key statistical bar, the companies said they would still be approaching regulators in hopes the vaccine would be approved.
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RoFL. It seems that the CRO scre*** the CT design, and the statisticians tried to save the day by making cuts to match the stat sign difference needed. Nothing new under the sun. The endpoints are always “pre-agreed” with the FDA. Or they were…
Planning for a walk in the woods? Do you like meat?
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alpha-gal-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20428608
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Thankfully, for us over here at least, the tick associated with the allergy risk is not found in Europe, but limited to parts of the US and Mexico.
In other news, though, I pulled a tick of one of my cats a few days ago. It’s the first time I’ve found any at this altitude, ~1350m, so I don;t know if I’ve just been lucky up until now or whether it’s perhaps a result of the changing climate.
James spends most of his days outside, averaging around 18 hours outside and 4-5km travel per day (per his Tractive GPS tracker) a lot of it in grassy/shrubby areas, which are also close to cattle grazing areas, so I’m not surprised that he would pick them up if they’re there.
But as I posted above, the disease is!
Ahh, too many links, didn’t read them all.
Actually, east coast Australia is one of the Mammalian Meat Allergy hotspots…just add it to the list of dangerous creatures.https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/articles/2026/may/mammalian-meat-allergy
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