New research says cats may be controlling your mind with their poop.
You're in your car, late for work. You merge onto the highway, but the person you pull in behind is driving 14 mph in a 60 mph zone. This is unacceptable.
You're losing it, tailgating them and letting loose a string of impressive bodily mutations you'll exact on them that naturally only you can hear. But the audible anger in your own voice gives you a small but fierce agression boner, and it eggs you on.
As they slow down even more to make a signal-less exit off the highway, you pass by them, RPMs revving up to the red as you flip them off in a silent "FUUUCCKK YYOOUU."
As you pass by, leaving them in a cloud of your exhaust, you notice the driver.
It's a little old lady, adorned in little old lady glasses with a little old lady white 'fro. It's immediately apparent she's both adorable and lost.
You feel like the dick of the century.
Why, God? Why were you compelled to be such a flaming cock, overcome by the dreaded rage of the road?
Well, science has finally figured out an answer to your aching question, and that answer is … cats. Fluffy, pee-pee baby little kitties.
That's right. Snuggly kit-kats are, according to a recent study, the cause of road rage. Also, they accomplish this astonishing task by controlling you with their poop.
See, some cat poop is infected with a parasite called toxoplasma gondii, a bitch of a bug that likes to nestle into human brain tissue and mess with mental functioning. According to some scientific accounts, infection with t. gondii can lead to delusions, schizophrenia, suicide attempts, reduced memory and most relevantly, the kind of explosive rage associated with traffic accidents.
The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, found that people with intermittent explosive disorder — who have recurrent outbursts of extreme anger, like road rage — are more than twice as likely as healthy people with no psychiatric disorders to have been exposed to t. gondii.
Cats are wholly responsible for the parasite's survival, as it can only reproduce in cat intestines and be spread by cat feces. So, as the thinking goes, if t. gondii can control the minds and behaviors of humans, then cats must be the culprit.
However, before you go skipping down to the nearest kitten euthanasia clinic, know that while people can get t.gondii from cat poop, they can also get it from undercooked meat or contaminated water as well. So Fluffy McFlufferton the Fluff Third may or may not be responsible for the time you sucker-punched a motorist who cut you off.
Also know that the results of this study come blanketed in a particular context, a time in current history in which the media is having a field day trying to demonize los gatos, kind of like what we did here. This increase in anti-feline sentiment stemmed from a 2012 article published in the Atlantic called "How your cat is making you crazy," which focused on Czech evolutionary biologist Jaroslav Flegr. Flegr blamed t. gondii for causing untold car crashes and suicides and for screwing with his own brain, making him act strangely.
"Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year," he told the magazine. It's "wild, bizarre neurobiology."
But that crazy article is not necessarily a reason to shun cats, unless you're into that kind of thing. This study, like many others, didn't even come close to determining that t.gondii causes road rage … it merely found a correlation between the two. Remember what all your science teachers said: "Correlation does not equal causation." Yes. Great.
So, should you throw out your cat in the name of saving countless lives from your merciless road wrath? Meh.
"We know that having pets is very good for mental health. It seems to reduce stress and help with social problems," the study's lead researcher Royce Lee said. "So I wouldn't advise people to do anything different. Because you probably would lose more than you would gain."
… Sure, if you call losing a furry, six-pound ball of mind-controlling poop a "loss" …
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