An Oregon man contracted the plague when he tried to take a dead rodent away from a cat, and was in critical condition as of Friday.
The man was one of five people who have contracted the plague in Oregon since 1995, the Star Tribune said.
The Star Tribune reports that cats are used to control rodent populations in rural areas. The bacteria that causes the plague is kept alive in rodent populations, as the populations survive the bacteria.
The Oregon man was not the first human to have the plague in 2012, the Associated Press reports.