Posted on 04/03/2014 4:37:56 PM PDT by Nachum
No one would accuse Jaroslav Flegr of being a conformist. A self-described “sloppy dresser,” the 53-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 has decided it is now OK to get up on the kitchen table and lay on my laptop keyboard while I am using it. Removing her usually involves a lot of screaming and bloodshed. Her screaming and me bleeding.
I don’t have a cat, so..no excuse.
Our cat’s drool could be marketed as a chemical weapon. The pain starts on contact, and then the itchy rash erupts.
bookmark
I hope your cat doesn’t have an FR account, and reads that ....LOL.
NO CAT???
What kind of FReeper are you? ;-)
That was trisham with no cat. I have the cat with bad teeth.
Oh, that’s too funny.
Correct. I have the dogs.
Jake likes to jump on the keyboard, but he hasn’t shown any sign of being able to read.
oopsies...seems there is this cat laying on my keyboard...
Have you considered filling a bowl with cat food?
I’ve followed some research on TG for awhile and it’s a truly scary possibility. I recommend others do the same. For example, what if the true difference between collectivist obsessives and sane people is the former’s vulnerability to TG? The more you learn about TG, the more possible you realize this is.
Sheena has a double dish. Always heaped.
My wife does in home daycare. 4 little kids all day prolly drives her insane. It does me. I think my cat is just so happy to see me when I get home from work she needs to be comforted.
She is (about) 12 years old. We got her as a rescue.
Wow,no one has asked for a kitteh ping yet!!!!
Cats have to make us crazy. Is how they will take over the world and make us their slaves. :)
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