“…Even though the American tourist denied exposure to cats during her trip to Peru [9], and pet cats are not as common as dogs in traditional rural Peruvian households, it was nevertheless important to investigate the susceptibility of cats to this human strain, because B. rochalimae is most closely related genetically to B. clarridgeiae , a species for which cats are the natural reservoir [6]. Finally, because guinea pigs ( Cavia porcellus ) are commonly raised indoors, roaming free in Peruvian rural households [7, 8], we inoculated guinea pigs to investigate their role as a potential reservoir of B. rochalimae . Furthermore, guinea pigs are commonly infested by Pulex simulans fleas that will feed readily on humans, and a Bartonella species nearly identical to the human isolate of B. rochalimae [9] was identified in a Pulex flea collected on a human in Cuzco, Peru, based on the sequence of a fragment of the intergenic spacer region (ITS) [20].…”