As LDA speculated, in the comments following this post, we and our cats have indeed been Borged already.

Not by intelligent machines, but by Toxoplasma Gondii. One quarter to one half of the human population is infested with this parasite.

Toxoplasma absolutely loves to be inside cats. That’s the only place that it can reproduce sexually. However, its life-cycle takes it outside the cat and into hundreds of mammals, including humans.

For instance, a rat eats the cat’s feces and ingests Toxoplasma, which encapsulates itself inside cell walls, thus preventing the rat’s immune response from triggering and killing it. Unless the rat, or other host organism, has a damaged immune system, Toxoplasma doesn’t harm it physically. It spreads thoughout the rat’s system. Including the brain.

And, here — it does something subtle and cunning. It wants to return home, into the cat.

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Rats are, correctly, afraid of cats. They’re extremely paranoid, fearful critters. They flee at the smell of cat urine, thus decreasing their chances of being eaten.

Rats infested with Toxoplasma are attracted to the smell of cat urine. They hang out in areas where they find it.

Pretty soon, Toxoplasma gets to go back to the orgy.

It changed the rat’s behavior to benefit itself.

Humans pick Toxoplasma up from cats, as well as from contaminated soil, meat, and water.

Toxoplasma changes the behavior of humans, too. Recent research indicates that women infested with Toxoplasma are more open and warm and giving. (Caroline, who is obviously infested, hides this rather well, incidentally, but we all know…)

Men tend to be more averse to novelty-seeking. Both genders feel more anxious and guilty.

Kevin Lafferty made a creative leap, and analyzed the available info to see if Toxoplasma infestation in individual humans might actually be changing the nature of human cultures. He thinks it does have an influence.

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There are still some unanswered, and until now unasked, questions to be dealt with.

First: Does Toxoplasma make you more likely to consider cute little kitties to be irresistably adorable, and make you adopt them, thus ensuring that there are more homes, and better homes, for Toxoplasma to continue partying in?

The evidence of Caroline’s behavior strongly suggests that the answer is ‘Yes! Hell, Yes!’

Second, and more important: Has Rory been recently infested?

Because Little Tex looks damn adorable to me this weekend.

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The Toxoplasma story is complex and still unfolding, including fascinating stuff about Toxoplasmosis, how Toxoplasma may be changing male/female birth ratios in humans, and much more.

Here’s some basic recent research and articles:

Warning, this is a PDF – Kevin D. Lafferty on Toxoplasma influencing human culture

ABC News Report

Carl Zimmer has written repeatedly on the subject, as well as authoring the book Parasite Rex, which talks about Toxoplasma and other important tiny icky organisms. His blog entry, ‘Blame the Puppet Masters‘ is a good read that hyper-spokes out to a lot of related info.

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Pic credit to Rachael Who is Awesome, of course.