Yeah, I figured that some other people in our small world had posted on this already. It’s a couple of years old, and anything past a week or so on the net is decaying cheese.

I first encountered this info in ‘Peeps’ by Scott Westerfeld, which is about vampirism as the result of a parasite, but has great chapter intros on various parasites that muck with behavior. Incidentally, I haven’t yet found a Scott Westerfeld book that I didn’t like.

Parasitism vs. symbiosis is often a subtle and shifting distinction. We generally view our pets as symbiotes, since they give us something back, such as emotional comfort, at least. But a harsher assessment might view them as being parasites.

Dogs still act as guardians of our property, and rural people still use them for hunting, but what the hell use is a chihuahua or a dachsund or a shih tzu?

Cats still kill mice and roaches, but we do have pesticides for that. And we put up with an awful lot of psychotic behavior for the privilege of coddling the little sociopaths.

And, are the cats and Toxoplasma engaged in a vast conspiracy against us? As far as I can tell, they benefit each other mightily in this interlocking process, and it’s us paying the bills all the way.

But however Toxoplasma changes us, it certainly doesn’t have the same effect on humans as it does on rats. I’ve never met anyone — not even the most dedicated cat-lover — who LIKES the smell of cat urine.

http://www.davidbrin.com/givingplague1.html

Fun stuff.

It wants to return home to the kitty!