I used to work for the local health department. One of our responsibilities was restaurant and food facility inspections. I wasn't an inspector myself. We had files on everyone, including all the gory inspection details. Some folks would read every detail before they'd go eat in a restaurant. I didn't want to know. If it was open for business and bodies were not stacked in the aisles from food poisoning, I figured it was generally safe to eat there.

Last week I sat with a friend who was home from surgery and helped out around the house. One of my tasks was to catch a few chickens who'd gotten out of their pen and put them back. I don't know that I've ever picked up a live adult chicken before and it was the high point of my day.

Fascinating strand.

Especially appreciated the article about Toxo. One thing that disturbs me a little is how some people really minimized the concerns it raised. If you have known someone with schizophrenia and the heartbreak it causes to the whole family of a schizophrenia patient, I think you would change your views. And my guess is, Toxo can't be good for anyone's kitties either!

I hope that further research can reaffirm the article's conclusions and hopefully we can find a cure or way to stop this parasite. I see it as a parallel to the worms that can travel from dogs to humans and there is now medication for.

Linelle, we were cross posting--I have chased more chickens and ducks down to get them back in their pen or to clip their wings. If you are looking for an adrenaline high though, chickens pale compared to chasing a heifer in heat down a busy road.

I love my cat, but I don't let him on the counter either. I don't want anybody (human or pet) putting their feet where I prepare food, especially if they have just sifted through a litter box.

That being said, keeping your cat indoors prevents a lot of zoonotic illnesses, and also treating monthly for fleas/ticks/HW (even if indoor only). For me, it is more of a gross out factor than a fear of zoonotic illness.

But... it doesn't bother me to see others allowing cats on their counters. If I am at someone's house, and they clean their counters regularly, I wouldn't have a problem eating food that had been prepared there. It grosses me out a lot more when people don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom.

[my credentials... long time cat owner, and 9 years employed by veterinary clinics (not a veterinarian, though).]

colorfast, a heifer in heat. Yikes. I've always been a townie but I love farm animals and their smells. We once had a neigbor's lambs get into our yard and they really outfoxed our attempts to grab them. We all grabbed air and went flying.

If my cats were outdoors at all, I wouldn't let them on the counters or any other surface. Indoor only though is not an issue for me.

I would like to say that I have NEVER had a dinner invitation or an offer of seconds refused EVER but I do use the cats to ward off unpet friendly and outrageously overpriced contractors. It's great to see grown men freak when a cat comes into the room . . . DH was a dog man but he's been converted.

Like everything else in this world, simple common sense should prevail.

I always kind of gave lip service to "if my cats and dogs don't like you, you're gone."

Then... My dog who would invite burglars in and help them load up, backed up at someone with her tail between her legs, growling. That delivery person was told my dog(s) were friendly only if my husband I were home. STBX was long gone, but strangers don't need to know that.

Someone who doesn't like cats is out.
Someone who makes jokes about hurting a creature (deserves to die the way they joke) is out, and if all my cats hide when someone comes around, that person is out.

They're more important to me than anyone I can think of, and since I'm not interested in anyone in my life, people can stay in 2nd place.

catlover5, my STBX was also a dog man. Then I'd come home to find a 6'5" man, nekked, lying on the couch with 4-6 cats sleeping on him, and the dogs on the floor in front of him. Now that's a convert!

I didn't like my GC, but I was fond of his son, who wasn't the brightest bulb but he was crazy in love with my cats. I'd sit in my office while they'd be working in my kitchen and I could hear him singing and cooing to my old cat in a little high baby voice. It was adorable.

Not liking cats is a deal-breaker.

Reason # 17 to not have a built-in fridge:

so adorable!!! i did have a box built around my fridge and my cats are NOT HAPPY. fridge surfing was a fav of theirs, they are still mourning the loss....

I have ceded the high ground to Zephyr. It seems to mostly satisfy his counter surfing urge, so it's a good compromise.

Just for Marcolo's digestion (I swear this was about the only time Dmitri ever got up on the counter, and it was before the kitchen was finished). I will say that cats don't appear to lick the faucet itself as dogs do; in true feline fashion, they let the water come to them:

Now he just drinks in the bathtub, like all normal cats.
Turns out clawfoot faucets are the ideal height for a thirsty tuxedo:

CEFreeman, that is too funny! Were they trying to smother him? Forget the parent test growing up, if prospective dates for my sisters and I did not pass the cat test, there was no hope for the boy and the same holds true now for anyone that comes into our home. Recently, I had someone in here for a floor estimate, did you know the jerk wouldn't let my 11 year old gentle giant big doggie pass through the doorway so he could go outside and relieve himself? I told him to get out literally just get out. What a schmuck.

Linelle, how adorable! My cats could not get on top of the fridge where it was . . now it's in the dining room for the remodel and they are enjoying new ground, that and the MW which used to be on top of the fridge and is now on the dining room table. They like to sit in front of it or on it and watch the turntable move but I don't like that. . . I was always told not to stand in front of the microwave when it was on.

Circus, yes, all of my cats love to drink out of the tub faucet too. Is it because the water is so cold? Sometimes I forget when a visitor goes in there to warn them, someone might be in the tub but it's pretty funny when they realize! All in good fun. Life's too short.

Interestingly, one of the key symptoms of toxoplastmosis-induced mental disease is...liking cats.

Just saying.

Sometimes I forget when a visitor goes in there to warn them, someone might be in the tub but it's pretty funny when they realize! All in good fun. Life's too short.

Too funny, catlover5. I've had sink faucet drinkers. Just walking towards the bathroom created a lot of excitement. I've heard it's the running water aspect, maybe some instinctual recognition of fresh water.

I have a friend who can be very difficult--argumentative, stubborn, unreasonable. But when she's at my house my cats recognize an animal lover and are all over her and she dotes on them. I know that underneath her confounding exterior there beats a kind heart. My cats do not zero in on the cat haters. They figure it out quickly enough and don't waste their time.

I had to come back to this thread to see what in the world people were still writing about. Pet stories, of course! I love that people here love their pets.

I'll offer this one under pets as filters for who is good people and who isn't: When my daughter was in her 20s, there were a series of boyfriends. One was almost certainly gay and needing desperately to deal with it. I wish him well and hope he's found True Love in the intervening years. One she suspected of kicking her cat while she was out of the room, no proof, but suspicion (I think she was right. I took the cat to the vet a day or so later.) That boyfriend's audition ended right there. Her husband of seven years loved her cats from the beginning and they loved him.

The one kitty passed away a few years ago. They cremated him and buried his ashes in the garden. Her other kitty is elderly and ailing and is still much loved by both of them. Their rambunctious 4-yr old is ever gentle with her. Said child loves to take pictures with my iPhone. I told him it would be more interesting if he took pictures of things he liked as opposed to pictures of his feet and the floor (I've deleted at least 80 pictures of the floor and little toes in socks). So he took pictures of his blankie and stuffed doggie, his Thomas trains, and Lucy:

Awww! My iPhone always used to come home with pix of sockies, etc. Can you believe 5-year-olds have their own cameras now?

Our daughter sends videos of her Arkansas little ones, tho, and I love seeing how calm their cat and dog are in the midst of flying objects and little bodies. Old pros.

Marcolo, I think it may also cause a genetic mutation, permanently altering DNA. Thus having the inability to resist being a cat's $itch is passed through successive generations, whether a cat is present or not. I believe it's terminal.

LOL.

I actually think it's fascinating how it works. Apparently the parasite requires a cat to reproduce but lives in other hosts. So it wants its host to come in contact with cats and preferably be eaten by them. Thus mice lose their fear of cats and walk right up to them. Humans infected with the disease develop a fondness for cats and a tolerance or sometimes even an affinity for the smell of their pee.

Okay, now it's finally making sense. Everyone knows cats have rough tongues. Apparently it's so they can strip meat off the bones of their prey. My little Zephyr has the roughest tongue I've ever encountered. He will lick my ankle until I scream in pain. The little bugger is trying to eat me alive!!!

{{!gwi}}

How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You

Marcolo, why are you so hateful of cats? And why do you say that we need to hurt our cats? I don't get it.

krycek, I think maybe he's yanking our chains.

Oh, FFS. If one has cats, one's cats get on the counters. They just do. Even if one thinks they don't. That's what cleaning is for. Plain old soap and water is enough. You know what? I've had cats my entire life...and I've never had toxoplasmosis. Or a zoonotic disease. Because I CLEAN MY COUNTERS. As did my mother when I was a child.

Children are bigger vectors for illness than cats...and I let them into my kitchen. And, like one of the previous posters- *GASP* bathed them in the kitchen sink when they were babies!

Why, krycek, do your cats feel hurt if you don't ingest their poopies? I realize some people feel their cats are sensitive but that seems a little extreme.

I've never had toxoplasmosis

Actually you wouldn't know whether you harbor the parasite or not, unless your immune system is weakened or you inherited a genetic propensity for schizophrenia.

I have to admit that explanation of how brain damage leads to a house full of cats makes sinister sense.

marcolo--you are mistaken. I was tested for toxo antibodies when I was pregnant. Came back negative.

Not only do we allow our cats on the counters, we encouraged it. Kept their food and water dishes up there to keep it away from the dogs. It's very easy to me to adjust and make sure my prep takes that into consideration. People on the other hand are what you can't trust. Did they wash long enough after using the restroom? Or maybe they did, but the last person before them didn't and now they are spreading those germs even though they did everything right. I prep everything on cutting boards, paper plates, paper towel, or real dishes. After it is washed, it doesn't touch the counter.

All the cats we've ever had have not gone on our counters. Cats are trainable and can be controlled if treated with consistency. I'm sure someone will yell at me that I shouldn't do this, but I am able to defrost raw tuna fish on my counter and my cat doesn't go near it....whether I'm around or not. (I leave it out to get it started, and put it in the fridge while it's still cold.) He knows he's not allowed on the counter....he never considers it.

He also has been trained to sit up to get a treat, and he does "polite kitty". He sits and waits while I put his food dish down until I tell him OK. It's only required communication so he understands what I want and consistency so he knows what's expected. Polite kitty grew out of spilling food/water too many times by bumping his head into the dish as I was putting it down.

I'm surprised no one has commented on the link I posted above to the human foods that can injure your kitties like yeast dough and raisins. If they're not on your counters, they are unlikely to get into food they shouldn't.

I have to admit that explanation of how brain damage leads to a house full of cats makes sinister sense.

There's speculation that the parasite is the explanation for the crazy cat lady syndrome. A good friend of mine became president of a cat rescue society after she retired. She was a real cat lover, and I swear she'd had her two cats for a hundred years and they were still going strong. I saw her a few months after she started the job. First thing she said was, "These cat people are all crazy." It was the collectors who were the problem. The more cats you had, the more likely you were to be batty. She actually had to institute a rule that nobody could be accepted as a volunteer if they had more than 20(!) cats.

There are sane people with cats and nutty people with dogs or birds or fish or nothing, but the syndrome is recognizable enough that the parasite might be the explanation.

Now the dang cats are messing with my appliances.

LOL adorable
i have fallen in love with your holsteins
dont tell babushka cat....there is plenty of love to go around.

Although I'm not a "cat person" I like them well enough, and have provided a home and a soft lap for several cats over the years. I wouldn't allow them on the kitchen counters, but it's certainly possible that they got up there when I wasn't around. They were allowed on furniture and bathroom counters.

That said, the photo that catlover5 posted of kitties on the dining table linens moments before dinner? I'm with marcolo on that one. Unless you stripped the table and reset it, that is gross. I'm curious, would the people who thought that okay be just as fine with pet rats, or ferrets, or rabbits, or hamsters scampering all over the tablecloth just before guests arrived?

One day our little guy ran inside through the doggie door with such exuberance, he found himself on the dinning room table. He walked from one end to the other and back again, turning circles, beside himself as he had no idea what to do or how to get down, dancing over plates and serving bowls (empty), and butter, knocking over wine glasses. It was hilarious!

I think we changed out everything...and we usually have blankets down on our sofas too... :-)

{{!gwi}}

AnnaA, what a cutie. That's a hilarious story. Wha? How did I get here?!!

For cat lovers only....

Here is a link that might be useful: Simon's cat

I adore Simon's cat. The one with the kitten and the old cat is hilarious. I went through that last year with two kittens and one old female and this is very true to life. He needs to do one with the cat on the counter.

Of course I thought of this thread when I placed my bagel with cream cheese on the counter, and left the room for a minute, and returned to see my cat stuffing her face in the bagel. Needless to say the bagel got trashed. She is obsessed with dairy products (and chicken).

I always thought my cats' tongues were for exfoliating. Who needs special soaps, etc?

... I doubt I will ever get back into Marcolo's good graces after my photos, but here's an attempt: one of my favorite design web sites:

moderncat.net

Too funny Chiefy76, and the cat exfoliating system works for me CEF! Great cat furniture circuspeanut!

Do threads max out at 150? If so, I will be sad... ):

I may have found this on a GW thread many months ago. Forget where I found it. But very appropriate here. Too cute, except I keep fearing that a dog will gobble a kitty. old fears run deep!

Here is a link that might be useful: Doggies that Love Kitties

I had a dog (lab/springer mix) who was adored by my cats, esp. the female. She washed the dog's face and cleaned her ears. She used her back as a scratching post. When our dog died, the cat was lost without her pal.

I will miss this thread when it maxes out.

I love Simon's cat. I also love Henri, the Existential Cat. If you haven't seen it, it is hysterical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q34z5dCmC4M

What about this cat on the counter?

That's one way for the parasite to ensure you're eaten by your cats.

Nice kitty, whatever kitty wants. Tonight was my kitchen's IRL Big Reveal. Everyone was fascinated by the sink grid. And then, before I could intercept him, Zephyr jumped onto the counter and started eating the brie. There was more laughter than I expected.

Linelle, how fabulous!
Stupid humans staring into a sink, while there's food to be had!

I loved the Simon kitties, and I swear mine are also plotting to kill me.

Morgan my dog, Korgie shaped and short, just stood up against the counter and ate my last brownie. I'm not happy, but at least she wasn't standing on the counter!

Linelle, I was just showing my DH your Kitty Aid pic as we remembered cats of ours who use to love hanging out on the top of the frig.

Perfect event for your kitchen celebration. Go Zephyr!

I couldn't resist resurrecting this thread:

Way up above, I half-jokingly said it would be interesting, if creepy, if toxoplasmosis in humans caused behavioral changes that made people like cats. That would be advantageous to the parasite, since it would help it propagate. I thought of this because a friend with a Ph.D. in zoology told me that relationships like this aren't all that uncommon in the animal world.

Well, truth is stranger than my lame joke. Evolution has come up with some amazing Rube Goldberg devices. Toxoplasmosis can infect rats, but it has to be transmitted to a cat in order to complete its reproductive cycle. The answer: a toxoplasmosis infection in a rat alters its behavior so that it loses its fear of cats and can even become sexually attracted to them. The cat eats the rat, and the circle of life continues. (Cue the Lion King music here....)

There are effects in humans too. Apparently it's been known for a while that toxoplasmosis infection is correlated with "neurotic behavior" in humans. Now, a study published last week has found that women infected with toxoplasmosis have a much higher risk of suicide (about 1.5x) than women who are not infected. It was a big enough study that the results are statistically significant down to pThe links are all in the article I linked to above. The new paper linking toxoplasmosis to suicide risk has a lot of details on proposed neurochemical mechanisms for the connection, most of which were way over my head.

The world is a strange place!

Laura