39 Replies to “Here’s Jonny Cat!”

  3. Most cat owners or should I say ‘care givers’, are controlled by their cats. So what’s the problem? It’s a life style. It’s not so bad. Cats are very cool creatures.

  5. What made the cat lady on your street so loopy? – or that loopy cat loving ex girlfriend?
    Now ya know.

  8. I like cats. Got two of them myself. I like them because they have the same personality as me.
    They are assholes and they don’t care. It sometimes brings a tear of joy to my eye thinking about that.

  9. I just forwarded the article (which I’m not sure some read) to my granddaughter who has three cats and a dog which means her brain could already have been damaged or why empty cat litter every day?
    I’m safe as I never go in their house. God blessed me with allergies to cats in my old age and a hatred of them as a child.

  10. I was going to laugh this off, but the farther down the article I got the more interesting it is. When you get to the part where t. gondi has the ability to make the brain crank out dopamine, you have to go “hmmmm….”
    …I wonder if there’s a parasite that causes liberalism…

  12. As one who has tried to avoid poets and avant-garde Greenwich Village types for most of my life, I’m disappointed to learn that my strategy stopped being effective around 1800.

  13. Liberalism is a mental disorder caused by cat sh!t….glad I don’t have a cat in fact I. Hate them and have no use for them.
    I cannot justify being at the top of the food chain and every other chain and cleaning cat’s chit mang. Same reason I don’t have a dog I think it is so silly seeing people walking around with dog chit in a bag lol with the dog walking in front of its “owner”. Lol. I appreciate there responsibility greatly as dog “owners”. But I will NEVER pick up after a domestic animal. Cattle horses et al exempt cause they make money and are usually part of a business and are just on a different level. Same with breeders it is a business . Four dogs no kids …..to me your useless and are of no value to the society in witch you live …but I will say if you don’t want kids and don’t have any kids thank you for being responsible.
    Cats suck!

  18. A really interesting hypothesis which I didn’t need to read today. This evening will likely be spent on looking at the neurobiology of T. gondii and looking at other parasites/viruses. This area has some really significant implications on potential means of rewiring human brains after strokes.
    I don’t think that my contempt for authority has anything to do with my being around cats most of my life but should probably get myself tested for T. gondii antibodies out of curiosity. Dogs have their own parasitic ecology and probably cause more infections in humans than cats.
    What surprises me is that the most important question wasn’t investigated; are people who are T. gondii positive more likely to have cats as pets? What a better way for a protozoan to increase its numbers?

  19. “The more I deal with people the better I love my pets.”
    I hear that a lot. And I think, yeah, it’s tough to get people to worship you like a god and jump when you tell them.

  20. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, pigs treat us as equals. Winston Churchill
    Dogs have owners, cats have staff.
    Dogs think they are human, cats think they are Gods.
    Cats and women do what they want, dogs and men might as well get used to it. unknown

  21. Living out in the country you have a choice. Cats or mice. Traps and poison work fine for a while but then mice get wise to them. They never get too wise for cats.

  23. If you locked your dog in a trunk overnight and your wife in a trunk overnight which one would be happy to see you when you open it? :)))

  25. Although I am tempted to attribute all of my horrible personal problems to a parasite, actually none of this is news. The article’s interesting, but we’ve all known about Toxoplasma for a long time. There are cats everywhere, so everybody’s been exposed anyway. Don’t freak out and shoot Mr. Cuddles.
    That said, I’m looking forward to Loki’s further reflections.
    I like this one.

  26. “Infected women, on the other hand, presented in exactly the opposite way: they were more outgoing, trusting, image-conscious, and rule-abiding than uninfected women.”
    I would like to point out that I had cats instead of siblings, still have cats, seek out living arrangements involving cats when I am in foreign countries, befriend random cats on the street, have a cat breathing on me as I type, and yet I am a suspicious loner (not counting the cats) who resents even the most anodyne authority. I’m not really “image-conscious”; I’m just vain and I like shiney things. So I guess I might be The Simpsons’ crazy cat lady at syncro’s link at the top of the thread, but I’m not one of the irritating females described in the article.
    Still, gonna see if I can tested for the T. gondii. That stuff about ants is pretty freaky.

  28. Thank you syncro. I also just took an online reaction-time test and I scored above average. Stupid parasites trying to boss me around, huh?

  31. Black Mamba said: “…and yet I am a suspicious loner (not counting the cats) who resents even the most anodyne authority.”
    Ha! All the best people are.

  32. Cats and women do what they want, dogs and men might as well get used to it. unknown
    Posted by: nold at February 11, 2012 5:04 PM
    Actually Nold it was Robert A. Heinlein

  33. Frustratingly, all the most interesting papers are in obscure journals that don’t have online pdf files at the BC college of physicians online library. The librarians who work there must wonder about some of the weird searches I do and the papers they have to find and scan for me.
    There are a total of 247 papers in which Toxoplasma gondii and schizophrenia are mentioned and haven’t even gotten into the MVA studies or some of the other interesting stuff. The paper on suicide and T. gondii doesn’t have an online pdf. Had forgotten about T. gondii neurologic disease as haven’t seen a patient with AIDS for over 15 years but cerebral toxoplasmosis was a common disorder when I was an intern. The weird neurologic symptoms we used to see in AIDS seem to have gone the way of von Economo’s encephalitis.
    That tells me that the immune system does a fairly good job at containing toxoplasmosis in adults, but the assumption here is that one either has a rather obvious case of encephalitis or inert Toxoplasma cysts sharing space with all of the other inactive neurotropic microorganisms that we carry around with us.
    One of the things that occurred to me decades ago is that there might be a simple organism level apoptosis switch to explain the increase in suicides and deaths from MVA’s that occurred in early studies of fibrates to lower cholesterol. It may be that T. gondii is activating this organismic apoptosis circuit which is not nearly as interesting as it rewiring the brain. Still, this would have significant implications and one can envisage custom designed viruses which would cause infected people to commit suicide in large numbers.
    It’s going to take a few days to look at this literature but now have to deal with my cat who’s feeling neglected and will ask her to give me a feline perspective of T. gondii infection.

  35. T. gondii neurologic disease, that’s where I’ve heard of this before. Thought it sounded familiar. When I was a PT student I hung around with some AIDS researchers, toxoplasmosis was a topic of conversation.
    There was some weird bug that grew in water tanks on the roofs of NYC apartment buildings, only AIDS patients ever showed symptoms from it. I think it might have been toxo from pigeon droppings. Or flatworms, can’t remember.
    The ant thing is a common concept in science fiction, every time a writer is trying to explain some mind control deal they come up with the ant on the grass blade getting mowed down by the sheep.
    Thing to remember about ants, they don’t have much circuitry to fool with. They are very finely tuned at the hardware level, as it were. A bacteria or a worm changes one neurotransmitter a little, that will create a -large- change in behavior. Which is also a protective feedback for the hive
    Change one transmitter in a human, all that happens is they get a bit out of sorts until they adjust to it.
    People live through drug addiction, strokes and major brain damage, one little bug is squat compared to that.

  36. I know from hearing anecdotal evidence on global warming on the CBC, that it is the most powerful evidence available. Therefore I offer this story. A friend of mine who loathed cats, ended up with a stray on her doorstep in the middle of winter. She took it in grudgingly, out of pity. Within a week, it was Blackie this and Blackie that. He was sporting a jeweled collar and she was sending away for special food. He had “wormed” his way into her heart. At least, I thought it was her heart. But now I understand it was her brain. Anyway, Blackie had a soft berth from then on.
    Actually this is quite fascinating. Behavior modification via parasites. Could this research be used for good do you think?

  38. Ah Black Mamba. What can I say? I am the play toy of several cats. They look down on me, but they are gracious enough to allow me to lavish them with love and attention. They are strays and all come from difficult circumstances, but that doesn’t prevent them from believing they are descended from royalty.

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