Health Cats and dogs get COVID-19 from their owners at extremely high rates About two-thirds of pet cats and more than 40% of pet dogs in the study caught COVID-19 after their owners had the disease.  A cat sleeping on a bed. (Image credit: Shutterstock) Pet cats and dogs often catch COVID-19 from their owners, a new study suggests. The study researchers found that, among the pets of people who had recovered from COVID-19, about two-thirds of cats and more than 40% of dogs had antibodies against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, meaning the pets had been infected with the virus in the past. In particular, cats that slept in their owners' beds had a high risk of catching the disease. Although researchers have previously documented a few cases of pets catching COVID-19 from their owners, they didn't know exactly how common this human-to-pet transmission was. "If someone has COVID-19, there is a surprisingly high chance they will pass it on