Posted on 02/10/2012 6:08:44 AM PST by C19fan
NO ONE WOULD accuse Jaroslav Flegr of being a conformist. A self-described “sloppy dresser,” the 63-year-old Czech scientist has the contemplative air of someone habitually lost in thought, and his still-youthful, square-jawed face is framed by frizzy red hair that encircles his head like a ring of fire.
Certainly Flegr’s thinking is jarringly unconventional. Starting in the early 1990s, he began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it was probably doing the same to others.
The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces, is called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short) and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis—the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes. Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease to the fetus, in some cases resulting in severe brain damage or death. T. gondii is also a major threat to people with weakened immunity: in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, before good antiretroviral drugs were developed, it was to blame for the dementia that afflicted many patients at the disease’s end stage. Healthy children and adults, however, usually experience nothing worse than brief flu-like symptoms before quickly fighting off the protozoan, which thereafter lies dormant inside brain cells—or at least that’s the standard medical wisdom.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
My cat wakes me up at 2:40am every day for food -
At which time I get out of bed, trudge downstairs, and prepare the food.
Mind control? It’s already here. Fnord.
For where we live in Kentucky now, cats are a way to keep critters down. People have lots, and when they get run over by cars (happens a lot), they just make more. Our neighbor has five or six cats, none of which ever see the inside of the house. We accidentally ran one down a couple months ago. We apologized and felt really bad, but they said “no big deal”. They treated it as if we had run down one of their chickens.
Cat’s don’t make people crazy around here, but they do keep the field mice down.
Cats.
Furry, four-legged parasites.
Spawn of the Devil.
Bah.
Can't think of too much else though...
I bet you would make a good target.
That is probably one of the craziest things I have ever read. Not saying it is not correct, just saying it is crazy. I am sending it to my veterinarian brother.
Even if you have an exclusively indoor cat, if you have mice, your cat can get infected. Or you could, without the cat.
In the fall, mice often try to move into our house. :[
Both of my parents were treated for neck tumors caused by cat scratch fever.
I have two indoor cats and my life is just fine as long as I obey their wishes and do what I’m told.
I had a cat once. She used to stare at me all the time. I finally asked her what she was staring at. She said, “I was just thinking that if I was bigger, I would eat you. Now, clean up my catbox and die!”
Probably would...just make sure you shoot straight because I shoot back.
The problem with these studies is that he assumes that an uninfected group would normally have the same traits as an infected group. To get infected, someone would have to own a cat and take an active role in cleaning up the litter box.
Perhaps all he has shown is that men who own cats have fewer friends than men who don’t own cats. Perhaps a lonely man might be more willing to get a cat.
If he doesn’t control for that, his research may be of very limited value.
Dohmer..is that you?
Nope, just somebody who was told he should be shot for his thoughts (how quaintly Chinese, don’t you think?)
and somebody who think cats are about as useless and malignant as mosquitoes.
***Cat’s don’t make people crazy around here, but they do keep the field mice down.****
When we bought this place it was overrun with field rats. There were old rat traps everywhere under the house.
Eventually we ended up with about five stray cats and have not had a rat or mouse problem since.
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