Holy fuck, it’s true—my cat might be the end of me. And yours, perhaps, could be the end of you. In the March 2012 issue of the Atlantic (h/t the Awl, number one source for cat news on the Internet), Kathleen McAuliffe reports on Czech scientist Jaroslav Flegr, who researches Toxoplasma gondii—you know, the cat shit-borne parasite that causes toxoplasmosis? Flegr is unusually intimate with the parasite because he’s got it. It occurred to him that this might be the case 30 years ago, when he read about a flatworm parasite that uses an ant to get itself inside a sheep’s stomache. Jagr realized that his behavior “shared similarities with that of the reckless ant,” writes McAuliffe: He stepped into moving traffic. He spoke his mind in a communist country. He wasn’t bothered by gunfire.
Was he infected with a mind-controlling parasite? He was!