Your Cat Is Trying To Kill You
But not in the way you think…
We have all had that moment when it feels like a cat is plotting to kill us. For me, it was a tabby named Clarence. He still haunts my dreams. But, it turns out that your cat might actually kill you! Their devious plan is to influence your mind into becoming a risk-taker with high levels of anxiety, eventually causing a deadly accident, depression or even suicide. This isn’t a feline Jedi mind trick, it’s a parasite, and there is a good chance that you have it. But don’t chase your beloved fluffy friend away just yet, because this same parasite could turn you into a millionaire!
The parasite in question is called Toxoplasma Gondii, a single-celled eukaryote (a creature with mitochondria in its cells/cell) that causes the disease Toxoplasmosis. Most people infected don’t show any signs. Some will suffer long flu-like symptoms, whilst an unlucky few can get seizures along with some other nasty symptoms that, for your sake, I won’t go into here.
But ‘Toxo’ isn’t your typical infection. Unlike other parasites, it can thrive in almost all warm-blooded animals, but it only reproduces in felids (cats). So everything from you to…
