“There’s fresh evidence that cats can be a threat to your mental
health,” according to a post on yesterday’s NPR health blog,
Shots. The threat, reporter Jon Hamilton explains, is not the
cats themselves by the Toxoplasma gondii parasite that some cats
pass in their feces.* “A study of more than 45,000 Danish women
found that those infected with [Toxoplasma gondii] were 1.5
times more likely to attempt suicide than women who weren’t
infected.”  “Still,” Hamilton continues, “the absolute risk of
suicide remains very small. Fewer than 1,000 of the women
attempted any sort of self-directed violence during the 30-year
study span. And just seven committed suicide.”  In fact, it may
well be that T. gondii infection has no bearing on the risk of
suicide at all. As the researchers themselves point out in a
paper published in this month’s issue of the Archives of General
Psychiatry, “we cannot say with certainty whether the observed
association between T. gondii infection and self-directed
violence is causal.” “T. gon