"It’s almost impossible to hear about Flegr’s research without wondering whether you’re infected — especially if, like me, you’re a cat owner, favor very rare meat, and identify even a little bit with your Toxo sex stereotype. So before coming to Prague, I’d gotten tested for the parasite, but I didn’t yet know the results. It seemed a good time to see what his intuition would tell me. 'Can you guess from observing someone whether they have the parasite — myself, for example?,' I ask."
—Do you have a cat?
Thursday, February 9, 2012
99
So cats! They poop in your house, they make you crazy, they shed everywhere, and they barf on all your favorite things. Why haven't you gotten rid of them yet?
@parallel-lines I WILL NEVER. SHE LOVES ME.
(I may be a future cat lady).
@OhShesArtsy She would eat your face if you held still long enough!
@parallel-lines She's just hungry. Poor baby! SHE LOVES ME.
(My denial factor is high).
@OhShesArtsy my mother tries to tell me that cats are incapable of love and that my desperate attempts to win the affection of my very ornery old kitty are in vain but SHE'S WRONG my cat will love me if i try hard enough!
@shhhhk I think your cat will love you more if you ignore her and make her beg for your love.
@Ophelia http://www.theonion.com/video/how-to-put-the-spark-back-into-your-relationship-w,14398/
Your cat will like you more if you let her eat cat food off your face.
@Ophelia My cats loves me most when I am sewing or doing my taxes. Basically, anything that takes my attention off of her completely.
@OhShesArtsy From one future cat lady to another: yes, your cat loves you! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Especially when they blame it on cats' eyes (as most cat-haters do). "They see into your soul and judge you and/or hypnotize you into doing their bidding and blahdy blah blah, etc etc."
@OhShesArtsy And gives her the opportunity to sit on a pile of pape/cloth that you're using, I imagine?
@olivebee Her eyes clearly say, "I love you." They also say, "You best love me back, I know where the bodies are hidden."
@Ophelia Sitting on whatever I'm using is her next favorite thing to just straight up sitting on me. I'm the best seat in the house. We have physical altercations over her trying to sit on my (running) sewing machine.
@OhShesArtsy My cat used to have a particular predisposition to newspaper, poster board, wrapping paper, etc. Basically any large paper that needs to be spread out on a flat surface. It's a miracle she wasn't constantly covered in ink and elmer's glue.
@Ophelia OMG, when I wrap presents she RUNS back and forth across the paper. I have to lock in the bathroom or get my husband to restrain her at Christmas, it's crazy.
@parallel-lines Hello,my friends!Here's the most popular dating site for now__SeekCasual.com, a place for people who wanna start a short-term relationship.And also for finding soul mate.Over 160000 happy members are waiting their lovers.Join free and have a try,nothing to lose!
@Ophelia What I would like to know, is how my cat knows exactly what thing I will need next. I've just shooed him off the thing I need now, how is it that he always chooses to sit on the thing that I need after that? And also, how he always knows exactly the least convenient piece of floor to be underfoot on.
@OhShesArtsy This Christmas, my cat was mostly very good -- but as I was laying out the paper for the very last present I had to wrap, she walked over, studied the situation, nonchalantly reached out a single paw, and punched four perfect little claw-holes right through a wise man's face.
It cannot be overemphasized: Get rid of your cats, people, really, they are revolting.
@purefog Nah; just get rid of your parasites. Seriously, they're revolting.
As if I needed another reason to hate cleaning litter boxes!
Although I have heard that sleeping with your dog can give you like a million diseases, but whatever.
@Megan Patterson@facebook What?? No!! What kind of horrible diseases?
@Megan Patterson@facebook I'm ignoring that fact. Particularly in the winter, when the dog is like a living, furry bed-warmer.
@Ialdagorth http://www.livescience.com/10444-sharing-bed-fido-sick.html I am purposefully not re-reading because I have already forgotten.
@Megan Patterson@facebook To be fair, my dog is so vaccinated/dewormed and doused in highly toxic flea repellent chemicals (have you SEEN the warnings on Frontline? Holy crap) that I'm probably more likely to get cancer from touching him than any zoonotic disease.
@Megan Patterson@facebook I...should probably not have read that but I did. My dog is a delicate flower who despises the out of doors and barely tolerates her three times a day walks, AND is obviously vaccinated and flea medicined, etc so I'm going to pretend that makes it all totally ok. Because I keep my apartment at 61 degrees in winter, and uh, she'd be lonely on her dog bed, ok?
Also, bubonic plague? People letting their dog lick open wounds? I feel like I've peeked into Crazy Town!
@Ialdagorth OK, so I haven't LET my dog lick my open wounds, but he likes to lick my stinky feet a lot, and there are usually some open wounds on there, so it just kind of happens, OK?
I am, for one, am PSYCHED for T. gondii to be the next trendy disease!!! Your 15 minutes is over, celiac.
This was an interesting article! I sometimes shudder to think about the things we don't know now about medicine/diseases that we will discover in the future...
@hot dog princess
How about the future mental disorders? Remember that thread about Things?
"Take two capsules a day by mouth to prevent aversion to kneecaps. Inject once monthly to prevent self-flagellation in the presence of holes."
@Inkcrafter Future generations will look back in horror that people went without making pets of Surinam toads in the same way we currently look back in horror at bear-baiting.
@Inkcrafter Some people ENJOY self flagellating in the presence of holes, ok?
Compared with uninfected people of the same sex, infected men were more likely to wear rumpled old clothes; infected women tended to be more meticulously attired, many showing up for the study in expensive, designer-brand clothing. Infected men tended to have fewer friends, while infected women tended to have more.
I don't know, doesn't sound so bad to me. I could use better fashion sense and more friends!
@SarahP Yeah, this sounds pretty OK to me, except I guess for the "less suspicious" part? I don't have a car anyway so.
@SarahP This is my proof that, despite my fears, I am toxo free.
@LabRat I got to the point where it said "infected rodents were much more active in running wheels than uninfected rodents," and thought "oh, well I'm fine, then."
@SarahP It sounds as if the women were just trying to make a good impression and the men weren't giving a fuck. Also, who's to say those "friends" the women kept going on about weren't cats?
@monicamcl and @LabRat Yup, despite my husband's 3 cats, this article shows me I definitely don't have toxoplasmosis.
Radio Lab (http://www.radiolab.org/2009/sep/07/) did an awesome segment on this a couple of years ago. One of the facts that stayed with me is that there was a huge rise is schizophrenia among the bohemian artists of Paris once they started keeping cats as pets.
@Gloria I heard this! If you're not a bohemian artist, perhaps you have some sort of immunity? Like maybe artists are just more prone to schizophrenia ANYWAY?
@dj pomegranate I wonder whether right-brained people are more predisposed to schizophrenia (I feel like I've read something about this, having to do with the amount of linkages between the two hemispheres of the brain?), and therefore if the parasite increases the probability that someone who is already predisposed to it will develop it, an increase in cat ownership among artists would result in a higher increase in schizophrenia in that group than, say, a group of accountants?
@Gloria That actually stands out as one of the most suspect links. If the primary mode of transmission is improperly-washed veg, dirty water, and undercooked meat, which translates into a 95% infection-rate in some areas today, cats or no cats is not going to make a damn bit of difference back in Ye Olde Openne Trench Shitter & Raw Beef Pubhouse days. Did they control for all the other crap (syphilis, opium/alcohol/absinthe/etc abuse) or differentiate between higher rates of incidence and higher rates of reporting when they came up with that?
My own guess would be that the period coincides with greater industrialization and migration from more agrarian modes with a large kinship social network, where mild schizophrenia might not pose a significant problem to the sufferer, to a more urban environment with more stresses but fewer immediate social resources. So more problematic expressions of a disorder in a place where more people are likely to notice, on top of disorders which share a large number of symptoms (end-stage syphilis, Korsakoff's syndrome, etc.)....I mean, I'm just not buying the "It was all toxoplasmosis!" explanation.
@wharrgarbl Well, that's all rational, and no fun at all.
@Ophelia If you can't find the fun in syphilis-psychotic, absinthe-abusing degenerates getting all fucked up on coffee and scandalous living arrangements, I don't know what to tell you.
@wharrgarbl Good point.
@wharrgarbl I tend to think that living in cities is deadly anyway...
@.Lauren. It certainly is if you're talking about like, 1750-1900. I don't know how anyone ever made it long enough to die of drink, what with all the industrial accidents, disease-spewing, filth-choked gutters, and wandering stabbists.
@wharrgarbl Yeah... we might have some of the obvious environmental hazards under control, but I still think that humans weren't built to live happily in cities.
@.Lauren. But I live so happily in my city! The thought of living on a farm or acreage kind of makes me want to vomit. (Or maybe that's the toxoplasmosis talking)
@Chesty LaRue hahaha! Were you raised in one? I have a theory that we weren't built to live in cities, but we were even less built to undergo huge environmental changes (in your case, moving from city to country). Also, my theory might just be a theory for me? Also known as a personal preference...
@wharrgarbl This bit also made me think about the Protest Psychosis http://forensicpsychologist.blogspot.com.au/2010/11/how-black-man-became-schizophrenic.html
I mean, illness, especially mental illness, is often a social construct as well as a biological fact. Especially when it's untestable except as a series of symptoms.
My partner and I were discussing 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and I mentioned something about the protagonist being autistic. And HE said that many of the symptoms of autism as similar/possibly the same as the symptoms of trauma/PTSD. That a lot of kids who get diagnosed as mildly autistic actually have trauma. He is trained in special ed, so he is not (just?) talking out his bum.
@.Lauren. I grew up in a small city, which in anywhere other than the Canadian prairies would probably be classified as a "town"
@wharrgarbl Ahaha wandering stabbists! That's amazing. I want that to go on my resume.
2012-present Wandering Stabbist
But you guys, what about the part where it says exposure to the parasite as a pregnant woman can cause birth defects?! This is terrifying! Does it mean that since I'm (very probably) already exposed/infected, I will have to do some crazy parasite detox when I want to have non-parasite-infected babies?!
@dj pomegranate No, it's like rubella (or, to a lesser extent, the flu). It's why pregnant women aren't supposed to mess with catboxes. The problem isn't that you have it, the problem is a new infection during pregnancy.
@dj pomegranate I *think* it's only an issue if the parasite is active while you're pregnant. Latent ones probably aren't the issue (or we'd probably have a much higher incidence of birth defects). But, I am not a doctor/scientist/parasitologist/pregnant lady/etc.
@Ophelia Oh, ok. Because I definitely do not want parasite babies. :(
@dj pomegranate Well, if they were girls, at least they'd be outgoing and fashionable.
@dj pomegranate I am pregnant right now and did a lot of research about this, since my husband is in another state working right now and I'm the only one available to clean the cat box. Basically it's extremely difficult to get infected. It takes more than one day for the parasite to become transferable, do if you clean it everyday you'll get rid of it before that happens, and you have to get infected poo in your mouth to get the parasite. And it's only passable on a cat's first infection. The requirements for transmission are so lengthy that I think the chances are vanishingly small. Oh, and cats get it from eating infected meat, so an indoor cat is extremely unlikely to contract it.
I just wear gloves, clean it every day, and wash my hands extra carefully. My doctor and vet approve.
@Cavendish Like this! I was trying to find anything in that article that specified whether strictly indoor cats could ever come down with this? Mine has trapped a mouse before, so I suppose it's at least plausible. However, the vet does a fecal parasite test for her every year and she never goes outside. I currently clean twice a week; I may upgrade to every day to be extra safe.
@Argyle Toward the end of the article, it says this:
"Indoor cats pose no threat, he says, because they don’t carry the parasite. As for outdoor cats, they shed the parasite for only three weeks of their life, typically when they’re young and have just begun hunting. During that brief period, Flegr simply recommends taking care to keep kitchen counters and tables wiped clean. (He practices what he preaches: he and his wife have two school-age children, and two outdoor cats that have free roam of their home.) Much more important for preventing exposure, he says, is to scrub vegetables thoroughly and avoid drinking water that has not been properly purified, especially in the developing world, where infection rates can reach 95 percent in some places. Also, he advises eating meat on the well-done side—or, if that’s not to your taste, freezing it before cooking, to kill the cysts."
@dj pomegranate My younger sister is pregnant, and my mom wanted her to clean their cat's litterbox while she was on holidays, and my optometrist older sister FLIPPED because it can cause blindness. So, that is at least one of the birth defects. She went crazy because it's totally preventable and has seen a few people who are blind because of it, and I guess that pushes her buttons or something?
So, if you're an introverted male and you wear rumpled clothing... it must be cats?
@heliotropegerbil8 Cats, or all that serial-killing leaving no time for fashion or ironing.
@wharrgarbl Own a cat-->become serial killer-->No time for ironing? OR: Take up serial killing -->no time for ironing-->buy a cat for company?
@dj pomegranate I'm thinking the latter. I mean, you can't exactly get a dog if your rose beds are full of corpses, now, can you?
@wharrgarbl That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
O keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
@heliotropegerbil8 Proof?
Your Cat Is Trying to Kill You. Seriously.
An eye doctor once told me he could see a toxo cyst (in my eyeball?), but I still make my husband clean the litterbox.
@Anita Ham Sandwich So, the idea of toxo cysts in my eyeballs has me sitting at my desk going "NONONONONONONO" into my hands.
@wharrgarbl I should get rid of my eyes. Seriously, they're revolting.
@Anita Ham Sandwich He probably meant Toxocara canis, which is the roundworm of dogs and cats and can, indeed, travel to the human eye. ("ocular migrans.") Toxoplasmosis is completely different!
Brought to you by your friendly neighborhood vet tech (a career choice which has turned me into a Clean Person in a big, big way.)
@fruiting body
:-o
Amazing! I will avoid the litterbox guilt-free now! Thanks!
I, for one, welcome our new parasite overlords.
@akapocalypse Did I say 'overlords'? I meant 'protectors'.
Oh, good, I wanted to have a nice long scream at my desk first thing in the morning before my officemate comes in.
@figwiggin Your comment gave me a nice long chuckle.
my cat peed on the comforter last night. AGAIN.
I'm not that mad, though.
@ginalouise If it makes you feel any better, my dog woke me up at 5:45 this morning to let me know that he vomited on the living room rug.
@Ophelia gross but still cute!!
@ginalouise Mine once woke me up in the middle of the night to show me the mouse she'd killed and thoughtfully brought to my bedroom floor. I stepped on it with bare feet. She was very upset that I didn't appreciate it, as clearly my own mouse-hunting skills are sorely lacking and without a mother cat I will surely starve.
@Apocalypstick does yours wipe her nose on your nose/mouth and you are dismayed to find that she has a drippy nose? OR she rubs her nose on your computer screen and her nose drips onto the screen?
Then she purrs and you're like, "Ohhh, kitty!"
@ginalouise One of my cats is always pressing her nose up against the windows and leaving cat-snot on the glass. It's charming.
@Apocalypstick Sometimes mine thoughtfully eat the mice they bring in, but leave a little heap of internal organs on the floor. Cleaning that up is horrible. (But I still love them!)
@ginalouise No, but she does love to parade up and down in front of the computer screen purring fit to burst at the attention I'm giving her -calling her name, flailing arms, picking her up entirely... it's always when I'm doing something time-dependant, too. Adorable manipulative little fluffball.
Welp. I guess I am doomed. The minute my parents brought me home from the hospital as a newborn, one of our cats jumped in the crib with me and slept with me every night of my life till she died. I have owned 10 cats (not all at once!) since I was an infant, and I spend my Sundays volunteering at a cat shelter. My husband is mentally preparing himself for the day, 50 years from now, when I switch over to wearing cat-embroidered vests as my clothing of choice.
I have literally had a cat sleep next to my head/face for the 24 years of my life (get rid of me, I am revolting?) and I have never been seriously ill or gotten a blood test with funky results or anything like that. Maybe all the parasites are just waiting to attack when my life starts getting good and interesting.
@olivebee "The minute my parents brought me home from the hospital as a newborn, one of our cats jumped in the crib with me and slept with me every night of my life till she died."
That is so wonderful. Haters will say she wanted to suck the breath out of you or, less dramatically, was just using you for warmth. Me, I'm going with the idea that people and other animals can be good pals. It's obvious that they've enriched your life, and vice versa. What's a little toxicity in the face of all that?
@Barry Grant Truth. I believe there was a thread on here a few months back where everyone was saying that humans do a whole bunch of other harmful and/or gross stuff (everything from binge drinking to touching money), so why should we stop loving and cuddling our pets? And I heartily share that sentiment.
My favorite part was reading the intro:
"Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain..."
and then scrolling down and his picture comes up. No kook? Please. That is one Serious Scientist Kook if I've ever seen one. Bless his heart.
@Killerpants It's like a 20,000-word version of "Crazy man suspects he has brain parasites, proven correct, still crazy and parasite-infested."
But my cat is so cute, you guys.
Right now my roommate's cat enthusiastically sucking his bunghole clean with the face that I kiss on the bed I sleep in.
@Nutmeg That's just an animal thing, though. If you have animals living with you, that's going to happen. You know that time your hamster got out of its cage when you were seven and you didn't find it for two days? That's where it went and what it was doing. Fish have the decency to time it so you'll never know without a hidden camera, but it's still happening. Pet spiders do it and hope to hell you appreciate the effort they're going to for you, because seriously, what are they? Arachnologists? No. They don't even have the benefit of hand-mirrors. You are lucky they love you so much.
@wharrgarbl When my hamster got out of his cage he ate all the corn off of a decorative ear of it that was hanging 6ft up on an otherwise empty wall. How did he do it???
@Nutmeg Very carefully, and with great persistence.
@Nutmeg Those little fuckers are pretty crafty (sorry I had a love/hate relationship with a hamster, mostly hate because it BIT THE SHIT OUT OF ME)
Does anyone else want to sing the title of this post out like the "SHOTS!" song?
CATS CATS CATS CATS CATS CATS
CATS CATS CATS CATS CATS
CATS CATS CATS CATS CATS
EVERYBODY
edit: I had to look up the song lyrics to make sure I wrote out the appropriate number of "cats." Who's pedantic? Me!
@RK Fire That is the EXACT thought I had when I saw the title.
Am I the only one here who's sad he's not single?
Yes?
Oh.
Man, that cat in the photo is judging me so hard.
I'm still waiting for someone to take my cold virus brain-changing theory seriously. I swear that as soon as you touch something with the cold virus on it, it transmits messages from your skin to your brain telling you your nose or eye is itchy. So then you rub your nose or eye with your contaminated finger, and pow! You're infected!