Cat Poop (Article) Causes Anger Issues in Humans

I must confess, my human has a temper, and it is not pretty. Just recently, when she exploded in a fit of rage, it made me worry. Then I heard something really disturbing: I might be the cause of her bad temperament! And I thought I was here to help her be happy. How awful!

It was all laid out in an article on WebMD called “Could Cat Poop Germ Trigger Rage Disorder?” It was about some study in which these researchers found that humans with intermittent explosive disorder (IED) had a higher percentage of toxoplasmosis infection than humans who were considered “sane.” And supposedly we kitties — and our poop — are big time carriers of toxoplasmosis. So I was beginning to think that I made my human angry, when I didn’t even do anything! But before I got too upset, I found out the truth: the article itself is full of poop!

Here are some reasons why:

Humans can get toxoplasmosis from gardening or eating undercooked meat, not always from living with cats. The study didn’t look specifically at humans who had cats, just at the issue of toxoplasmosis.
Up to 75% of humans worldwide have been infected with t. gondii, the parasite behind toxoplasmosis. In the United States, it may be as high as 20%. Only about 4% of humans have IED.
People can avoid being exposed to any t. gondii shed by us cats by not touching our poop and washing thoroughly after cleaning the litter box. Anyone familiar with my human knows she washes her hands the moment she touches anything remotely dirty, and she wears rubber gloves to clean our litter boxes because she’s so grossed out by it all. (I find this a little bit insulting.)
This study was just that, a study. It wasn’t a clinical trial, and it only looked at correlation, not conclusions. And in fact, another, different study noted that “there was little evidence that T. gondii was related to increased risk of psychiatric disorder, poor impulse control, personality aberrations or neurocognitive impairment.”
In fact, one of the authors of the study mentioned in the WebMD article admitted that cats are good for human wellbeing and reduce stress. “You probably would lose more than you would gain,” by not having a cat in your life, he confessed.
Even the title is bogus. Toxoplasmosis is not a germ, as I mentioned before, it’s a parasite. Big difference and bad journalism.

So it turned out that my human blew up because the article made her mad, not me! Maybe there should be a study about inaccurate articles that put cats in a negative light, and their effect on human anger.
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