> "Now that we've got kids, I will eat that same piece of steak even if it falls on the floor"

... after the kids have taken a couple of bites of it and the dog sniffed at it. At least in my world. But I draw the line at the dog actually taking a bite from it.

On that note, a friend of mine (unknowingly) used water he thought was clean, but that came from a glass my cat had been drinking from, to dissolve heroin for injecting. The resulting infection nearly caused him to lose his leg - the lab analysis of the wound revealed the infection was caused by cat-saliva bacteria.

Anyway, just saying there are dangers from pets and allowing them to share your environment. Although, I let my cat take bites out of my food sometimes, and that seems OK so far.

> On that note, a friend of mine (unknowingly) used water he thought was clean, but that came from a glass my cat had been drinking from, to dissolve heroin for injecting. The resulting infection nearly caused him to lose his leg - the lab analysis of the wound revealed the infection was caused by cat-saliva bacteria.

> Anyway, just saying there are dangers from pets and allowing them to share your environment.

While that's true, the particular dangers from injecting cat saliva are usually pretty minor (not low harm, just low probability: you mostly run into them if you get bitten by a cat so that it draws blood, and you deal with them by treating that -- rare -- event as an emergency requiring immediate attention.)

The real danger revealed by the incident you describe is using poor cleanliness standards when injecting drugs (in this case, recreational, but that's irrelevant to the hazard, though its probably a lot more common with recreational drug use than otherwise). You don't use water that you merely "think" is clean for any purpose associated with injection, whether its cleaning anything used in the process or, worse, actually injecting.

> Although, I let my cat take bites out of my food sometimes, and that seems OK so far.

You probably shouldn't, though ingesting material contaminated with cat saliva its still probably much safer than injecting it.

Did he not "cook" the solution? Or did the bacteria somehow survive the process?

> In my mind, it was contaminated and a great risk to eat.

So, I'm interested in how you arrived at this thought. It certainly can't have been learned behaviour due to cause and effect - I don't think there are any recorded instances of food touching a dining table, being eaten, and the eater becoming ill afterwards, let alone that this happened to you (although, it may have, which would be interesting) so was it taught to you, or just over-cautious extrapolation?

Personally, I'm a great believer in floor food, and it hasn't ever worried me or caused health problems ;)