Could your cat be making you aggressive and angry… without scratching up that new furniture or doing something unfortunate in your shoe, that is. Apparently, the answer is sort of yes, and sort of no.
One of the hazards of cat ownership is the risk of contracting toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by the parasite toxoplasma gondii that is carried by many cats. This is not actually uncommon or normally considered a severe issue. In a some people, you may have flu-like symptoms, and most people show no obvious symptoms at all (however, if you are immunocompromised, toxoplasmosis can cause severe issues.) As many as 1/3 of humans worldwide are believed to be infected with this parasite.
According to this New Scientist article, researchers were looking into how the common parasite toxoplasma gondii, the cause of toxoplasmosis, might affect humans. It was already known that people infected with the parasite were more likely to have certain mental disorders, such as schizophrenia. And rats infected with the parasite are known to become more adventurous and aggressive, losing some of their natural caution — and thus becoming more likely to be eaten by cats, concluding the t. gondii life cycle.
Researchers looked at a condition known as intermittent explosive disorder, or IED (www.mayoclinic.org/… — the Edge browser inserts a new link at the front of the article, so this will have to do), where people will have sudden bursts of unreasoning rage. Their study showed that people with antibodies for t. gondii were more than twice as likely to have IED than those with no evidence of infection.
More interesting to me was this, though.
Across all three groups, those who tested positive tended to rank more highly in tests measuring aggression.
If toxoplasmosis drives aggression up in people, cats spread t. gondii, the cause of toxoplasmosis, and cats have become more popular as pets, could this explain the gradual decrease of civil conversation in our country? Could it even explain the Wreck List for the last few months? (Were most of the combatants pootie owners, or rasied with pooties?)
Obviously, more detail on the research, as well as more research, is needed before we can reach any sweeping conclusions. But if you have a pootie, beware — he or she could be driving you towards voting Trump.1 You have been warned.
L.V.
1 — This conclusion has no scientific basis, but I’d love to test the different voting groups, wouldn’t you?
