(NBC) – Meet Papille, the French cat who survived coronavirus.
The 9-year-old cat is the first known case of a pet being infected by the coronavirus in France.
The likely source of infection is her owners, who also suffered from COVID-19.
At first, the owners didn’t know what was wrong with her but she looked ill. As Papille’s state worsened over days, they started to link the cat’s symptoms to those described in COVID-19 human sufferers.
Their intuition turned out to be correct.
Papille was tested at a leading national vet school in Paris. The science director there said such cases remained very rare and called on pet owners suffering from COVID-19 to practice distancing from their pets as they would with family members.
Papille’s owners have praised the vet who looked after their cat.