When the cat's away...

Jonathan Franzen hates cats. In his massive and all around stunning novel “Freedom” there is one point that can’t not be argued. Franzen and felines are sworn enemies. It is a novel, where so many stories intertwine, but that fact remains salient, making it obvious to me that his convictions are genuine. One of the characters, Walter, spends much of the novel in a quest, or at least a tirade, against the beast of house cats, who kill nearly two million birds domestically each year. This is so overwhelmingly convincing to me, that I have made a point of tiresomely preaching anti-house cat propaganda to my friends, who basically think I am crazy. What I didn’t think about is that neither Franzen or I are Europeans, especially French. What could this possibly have to do with our dislike of cats? Probably nothing, but a recent article I read in Scientific American has made me think. Read the article and references if you want some real science, but here is a brief description.

There is an extremely common one-celled organism called Taxoplasma Gondii. Many new parents are familiar with this, as expecting mothers are often tested for this, as the neurological problems associated with a baby having Taxoplasmosis can be very dangerous. Basically it is a parasitic protozoa that takes up residence in the brains of animals, and creates a protective cell casing. This cell casing protects the host from any overt symptoms caused by the parasite, so there is no problem with having it, at least from all appearances. Now if you were a rat, the problems of hosting T. Gondii are much more obvious. It is this super smart single cell that has one goal only for existence and that is to live in the gut of a cat. So as a resident in the Amygdala, a part of the brain associated with emotions and certain senses, T. Gondii is in an excellent position to manipulate a rat who is hosting it. It does it in a very subtle way which is to disable the rats’ fear of the sense of cat urine. The rat can still smell, but has no anxiety regarding the dangerous cat urine, so may very well be eaten by a cat. T. Gondii then gets to fulfill its aspiration of living in a cat gut.

I have heard of such parasites before, as Carl Zimmer even wrote a book about them. It is fascinating for many reasons. The article touched on one that I hadn’t really thought of, which is much more philosophical. That is, how can we claim to have freewill when we aren’t even really controlling ourselves? A simple single-celled organism can be pulling the strings of our actions, adding yet another cause to the endless causes that make me believe that there is not counter causal freewill at all.

So why is it possible that my French wife loves cats and I and Franzen hate them? Well, T. Gondii is primarily passed to humans through raw milk cheeses, and raw beef which are commonly eaten in France. Therefore 80% of the French population host T. Gondii. Does this also mean that this population is putting themselves in unhealthy cat danger? Are old ladies who can’t move in France more likely to be sequestered in rooms of 20 cats who will one day devour them? I asked my wife if this accounts for the French love of the circus, and the large amount of lion tamers. Are those French people putting their heads inside lions’ because a parasite is telling them to be eaten? She thought this line of questioning rather stupid I think, and she is certainly right. It didn’t however stop her from saying “most of those circuses come from Italy anyway”, leaving me to wonder if she herself is not being manipulated by T. Gondii into cat denial.

Anyway, I better go chase the neighbors’ cat out of my garden before the bastard eats a poor sparrow....