Your cat can send you insane. Toxoplasmosis. I will never let a cat near me .

Originally posted by ellieN
Same here!! Can't tell you how many times I wake up and push my cat off my head or her trying to sleep under my chin. And on the funny side she does act like she sees something in the ceiling corner of a room or does this growling thing at an invisible entity!!!!

What freaks me out about my cat is when she is walking all calmly across the room towards me, then stops, her eyes will go huge, then she will bolt off in the other direction.

Makes me whirl around to see what is behind me. Most of the time nothing is there, sometimes it's the dog.

reply to post by Onet Wosix


I don't know if it's been said yet, but many people are already immune to toxoplasmosis and don't even know it. Toxoplasmosis is more of a concern to pregnant women than the general population anyway. My adivce: If you're pregnant, get someone else to change the litter box.

Toxoplasmosis can also be spread by eating unwashed, uncooked/undercooked fruits and veggies, undercooked meats, being exposed to rodent droppings, etc. Kitty isn't the only means of catching the stuff, so I wouldn't advise a one way trip to the vet.

Since there is more than one way to catch this, as with just about anything, proper hygiene is the best way to prevent it. Killing the cat isn't going to solve anything. And if cat owners aren't cleaning up after their cats, it's their own faults for catching Toxoplasmosis, not the cat's. Passing the buck and playing the blame game is just lazy. Just keep things clean and all will be fine.

Oh thats just T gondii! a lot of people already have that in them. It's basic goal in life is to infect rats, so they become sexually attracted to cats, and cats eat them. It basically takes control of the rat's brain and makes it a "zombie"

I think as long as your clean, and not dirty with your cat(s) you should be fine...

some funny articles on it.

t. gondii

zombie rats

seriously on that site, they have a bunch of stuff about it. They are really into it apparently.

It causes people to be bad drivers. Now I know why people act they way they do on the road!

Originally posted by BlackOps719

My grandpa always warned us kids that pussy could drive a man insane, clearly he had already seen this study.


second liner

I have been waiting that line

Cats are like any other inside pet; keep their litter boxes filled with fresh litter and wash your hands after cleaning.
We have four and a half mostly inside cats (one is a muchkin) and three litter boxes in the garage with a cat door in to the kitchen. Works fine.

Originally posted by NANAinINDIANA
reply to post by tsawyer2

 

I totally agree. My cat also sleeps on my head everynight and has for years. So much so that my hair is permanently flat on top of my head.
I read you can only get toxoplasmosis from changing litter boxes and touching feces, which is why they advise pregnant women not to change the boxes. But it is definitely okay to pet your kitty.

I had to laugh at your post of your permanently flatten hair!!
Once when I was trying to feed my Mom's cat for her, her cat got impatient with me and tried to paw the food from my hand. His claw caught my finger and dug in deep before I could get him off. Felt like a fish hook in my finger. That really hurt.!! Fed the "bad kitty" and went to clean up my finger. I washed my hands and put Neosporin on it and a bandaid. I was fine ..except for a very sore finger for awhile.

Your dog can give you rabies. Your spinach can give you e coli. Your plastic bottle can screw with your hormones. Your sushi can make you sick. Your fear can make you stressed out. Your spidergoat milk can stop bullets. Oh hey did you get all your vaccinations this year?


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My wife gets tested for this as she is pregnant so we have to be careful to a point. We have no cats but quite a few local cats do use our yard for god knows what, generally killing things and tearing through the garbage.
We always make sure to keep my first sons sandbox always covered when not in use otherwise they would use it as a toilet, can't really do anything about them using the garden though.
It's a shame some cat owners are not responsible for their pets.

Originally posted by StripedBandit
The article says it's a protozoa found in the cat's feces.
Just dont handle or consume the poo and you'll be fine lol

Flouride in the water.
Mercury in the fish.
What the hell am I gonna eat now????

reply to post by Onet Wosix


Oh yeah, I had this.
I grew up with about a million cats in the house.

I was possessed by my ex-cat for years.
But since i adopted a dog, I'm becoming like a dog for REAL. We sleep, eat, play and shower together.
I think myself and my dog are confuse if we are dog or human.

Its true!!

reply to post by Onet Wosix


Its too late. You are probably already infected, judging by your irrationality.

Its also called cat scratch fever, because cats dig in their litter boxes and get that bacteria in their claws. I know because my sister who worked in a vets office had it. Nasty stuff.

reply to post by pazcat

It's a shame some cat owners are not responsible for their pets.

I know. When I walk to my mailbox, I pass slaughtered bird bodies along the way. I bought a cute little bell, and showed it to it's owner, thinking it might ring and alert the poor unsuspecting birds about the pending ambush, and their untimely gruesome deaths, and she said "I'm not going to put that on my cat. She'll get it tangled up on something and choke to death". Then she said "it's just nature", which it is, of course, but I expect a domesticated animal to be, well, domesticated. Pffft.

The cat doesn't even eat them, of course, and it's distressing to me.

Sigh. Fine. To hell with the birds. Grrr.

Sorry for the OT, OP.

interesting. i wonder if there's any connection between the proverbial "crazy cat lady" and this?
that some kind of mental illness can be spread from cats to women with a genetic predisposition?
i've seen weirder posts here on ats.

reply to post by Onet Wosix


"Your cat can send you insane."

So does watching Fox News.

Reminds me of the South Park Episode

I do not like cats at all by the way

Well, guess I'm screwed.
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Originally posted by tsawyer2


My cat is more likely to make me go crazy by sleeping on my head all the time.

The cat is keeping a demon from getting to you at night. Put a black light in your room and the cat won't sleep on your head anymore.

UltraViolet Light keeps demons away. A Blacklight is ultraviolet. I chet you not. Something's feeding off of you.

I actually have toxoplasmosis of my right retina in my eye. I was the youngest male documented case in the united states back in 1983. Emory university used experimental technology for my case back in the day.

Basically, I lived in a 115 yr old house that we were remodeling, and the docs said I contracted it from the old insulation in the walls.

When I was in kindergarten, I noticed spots , or floaters in my eye. Got to a point where I had to cover my eye too see decent at all. After a dozen tests, and weekly blood work, it was determined to be toxoplasmosis of my retina. They treated with steroids for a year, and it went dormant. I haven't had a flare up of it in about ten years....but was a week away, according to doctors, to losing that eye.

Although cats are often blamed for spreading toxoplasmosis, contact with raw meat is a more significant source of human infections in many countries, and fecal contamination of hands is a greater risk factor

en.wikipedia.org...

If you've ever been around a cat litter box or sand cats have crapped in, you may have already had it and not known about it. Since meat is a greater source of the disease, being afraid of cats seems just a touch irrational.