I’m glad I’ve always been allergic to pussies.

Slow news day indeed, if this antique news item is to be considered interesting; but then, that would have nothing to do with the fact that it’s been spreading hand-to-hand on Facebook over the last day and a half.

And why would it not, since ailurophobes always looking for yet more justification for their abhorrence not just to the cat that does not live in their house, but to the ones that have been given shelter in homes they needn’t visit. I know how put out you’ve all been.

The people who feel the need to help this crusade – since no one can clean their house or wash their hands – remind me of the self-satisfied intellectual dilettantes who scoff at the site of smoke stacks and industrial plants that have ruined life as we know it (when in fact it is those same lung-choking smoke stacks that are responsible for the abnormally long lives we all enjoy, but whatever).

It if will give you any comfort, though, the war for your health is not yet lost. At the 2008 International Stroke Conference in New Orleans, Doctor Adnan Qureshi of the University of Minnesota demonstrated that within a study of 4,435 people, cat owners were less likely to die of cardiovascular disease, and those who did not own a cat were 30-40 percent more likely to die from it. Dog owners were not enthused to find that studies showed that owning a dog did not seem to decrease their chance of hear attack at all, but all pet owners should be know that the National Institute of Health agrees that all pet owners have lower blood pressure, tryglyceride and cholesterol levels, and generally make less visits to the doctor.

So wash your fucking hands.

Correlation is not causation.

One night a few weeks ago, my friend and I were driving down my street when a black cat jumped in front of the car (I hate hitting animals or seeing them dead on the street.)
Well we heard a loud thud and 5 seconds later 3 more thuds. I thought for sure there was going to be guts everywhere, but when we walked back up the street, the cat wasn’t there and a neighbor was there laughing. I asked what had happened and if he seen it all.
He saw it all. The cat apparently got hit, barely missed being crushed, after we drove away he was running in circles limping around, jumped at my friend and took off running in the opposite direction.
One down, eight lives left.

Just take a bath for shits sake.

Toxo gondii has long been suspected of affecting human behavior because it so clearly does in animal models. But of course, human, with notable exceptions, are not rats. But the building blocks of what makes our brains work (eg, neurotransmitters) are the same. Definitive proof is difficult to acquire because we just haven’t done the prospective study of describing people before and after infection, because hey, this isn’t Tuskegee anymore, thank god.

Not sure this backs any cat hatred. It’s merely biology. Just like if you understand that dogs, before the vaccine, were a major vector for human rabies infection, doesn’t mean you hate dogs.

Speaking of which, if you need another example of how microorganism infection of the brain can alter human behavior, rabies is a great example. Mind over matter won’t help much if you get this infection.

Different infectious agents, from viruses to parasites to bacteria are now shown to be involved in everything ranging from cancers to chronic problems like IBS, allergies, autoimmune disorders, anxieties, metabolic disorders, and even obesity. The science of most of these fields is only at the beginning. Obviously, the causal forces leading to these problems will be shown to be mulitfactorial, including the infectious agents, the genetic background of the individual, nutrition and environmental factors and ‘individual choice’. So not everyone will react the same way or perceive the effects the same. Plus you never really know what cards you have dealt to you.