The proverbial “cat lady” of a few decades ago was a reclusive female, usually beyond child-bearing years, who “loved” only felines and to whom every stray or abandoned cat in the neighborhood was taken (or dumped into the yard) with the assumption that it would live happily ever after.
It usually wasn’t until the death of the strange, unkempt woman who lived behind shuttered windows and barred doors that bodies of dead cats were discovered under furniture, stuffed into refrigerators or mummified in the walls--trapped in a futile attempt to escape the stifling ammonia that soaked feces-covered floors, furniture and walls and could only be abated by demolition of the entire structure.
The obvious symptoms are a consuming drive to keep an excessive number of cats, forsaking normal human relationships and social interaction.And, increasingly it is taking on a new mission--roaming streets and alleys at night with cages to trap, neuter and release feral (wild) cats to “save” their lives and is called TNR. Most of these animals face a lifetime of hazards and potential sickness or injury in unsafe and unsanitary locations. “Saving” one more—or a hundred more—is never enough!
New research has scientists wondering if it is really misguided emotions, or if Toxoplasmosis, T.gondii parasites, is actually the source of the Cat Ladies’ obsession for felines, even beyond the welfare of herself or other humans.
CAN CAT ATTRACTION BE MANIPULATED BY PARASITES?
This caused them to lose their fear of cats and actually be attracted to cat urine and thus more vulnerable to being caught by the cat.Dr. Joanne Webster coined the phrase, “fatal feline attraction” to describe this behavior.She observed that rats and mice infected withToxoplasmastart wandering around and behaving in ways that will bring them to the attention of cats.
T. gondii, or Toxoplasma, can be transmitted to, and live in, almost any warm-blooded mammal, but, since it reproduces sexually only in the intestines of cats, it is in the parasite’s genetic interest to be ingested by cats. Being able to manipulate the behavior of rats—cat’s most likely prey —can guarantee the parasite’s survival and proliferation.
In 2003, Dr.Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, discovered that people who suffer from schizophrenia are almost three times more likely than the general population to have antibodies toToxoplasma, according toan article entitled, A Game of Cat and Mouse, published in The Economist on June 3, 2010.
But, does it provide some insight into “cat-crazy” compulsive feline attraction?
“These people are, in effect, being controlled against all reason and common-sense by the very parasite that is reproducing in its primary host-animal - cats.