It's strange to me they tested mice. My understanding is that Porcine (pigs) models are usually utilized to evaluate potential GI/intestinal effects on humans. As human and Porcine GI tracts are similar (why you really need to cook pork or you can get diseases or worms from the meat).
The article mentioned cats, so the current list of know susceptible species seems to be bird, cow, mice, and cats. Not a great sign.
Cats have already been infected in the real world, so this is a no brainer. Starting with mice is a fast and cheap way to calibrate your experiments before you use the more expensive pigs.