We know they carry a parasite that can trigger schizophrenia. Are they also controlling our minds?

Immortalized on both the murals of Ancient Egypt and within the black borders of modern memes, cats have been a cultural force to be reckoned with since the beginning of time. The phenomenon of cats—our love, infatuation, and borderline addiction to them—is as obvious now as it must’ve been in Egypt, when several gods bore cats’ heads.

Why are cats so popular? Among the experts, there seems to be a consensus that cats, with their cartoonishly large heads and wide eyes, resemble babies, thus triggering a neurological response that forces us to love and protect them. Curiously, this response can spiral out of control, leading to “cuteness aggression”–the urge to crush the being whose adorable face beguiles us. If that sounds a little deranged, brace yourself, because it’s only the tip of the iceberg: we’re about to uncover the dark truth about cats, from the way cats can drive you insane to new studies that suggest cats can exert mind control and even shape the fates of entire civilizations.

Let’s go down the iceberg. We’re all familiar with crazy cat ladies; in fact, they’re as pervasive of a cultural archetype as cats themselves. Perhaps the reason for their enduring popularity in media is the dose of realism contained within this archetype. You see, cats happen to be the favorite host of a parasite that nestles in the brain and, to put it simply, drives you crazy.

Toxoplasma gondii, colloquially referred to as the “toxoplasma parasite,” is currently carried by what is estimated to be 30-50% of the human population on Earth. When it enters a human body, most commonly through contact with felines, toxoplasma cells hijack the immune cells of the host, turning them into “zombies” which continue to spread the infection throughout the body.

While toxoplasma infections don’t always produce symptoms, things become worrying when they do: studies have shown that carriers of the toxoplasma parasite have higher rates of several types of mental illness. The reason behind this is that, in order to control the host’s immune cells, toxoplasma cells secrete a substance called GABA, that, among other things, inhibits stress and anxiety. However, an overload of the GABA system caused by uncontrolled secretion by the parasite can lead to depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety, and other mental afflictions in their human hosts.

The impact of the toxoplasma parasite, spread in the majority of cases by domestic cats, is chilling. Scientists have found statistically significant relationships between toxoplasma infections and suicide rates in women; a group of scientists at Johns Hopkins University discovered that “cat ownership in childhood is significantly more common in families in which the child later becomes seriously mentally ill”; toxoplasmosis infections can be deadly to unborn fetuses and the chronically ill; men who spent their childhood around cats are apparently more likely to experience psychosis. However, there is an even more twisted side to this “parasite of the cats”: mind control.

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While humans and other non-feline animals can end up in a dire situation after coming into contact with toxoplasma, cats have instead developed a symbiotic relationship with the parasite. In short, they’ve built a relationship of mutual aid: when rodents become infected with toxoplasma after proximity to cats, the parasite alters their brain to become unafraid of cats and even attracted to their scent, suppressing their fear response and making them easier prey. This “mind control” effect extends to other mammals: hyena cubs and chimpanzees both showed “fatally bold” behavior in response to their feline predators such as lions and leopards.

Such a response might seem harmless to us; after all, humans aren’t hunted by cats (anymore). However, toxoplasma infections produce specific demands in humans…that cats are here to meet. The pain and alienation of mental disorders spurred by toxoplasma can, for example, be quelled by the presence of cats. Significantly, researchers have found that, unlike a spouse, cats cannot enhance positive moods—they can only alleviate negative ones. In this case, cats enjoy the benefits of symbiosis with toxoplasma: a person whose mental health declines after adopting a cat will thus have a greater dependence on their pet for emotional support.   

Cats’ deleterious effect on humans goes far beyond the individual–modern findings suggest that cat ownership can affect the values and fates of entire civilizations. “While latent toxoplasmosis is usually benign, the parasite's subtle effect on individual personality appears to alter the aggregate personality at the population level,” stated one 2006 study published in the National Library of Medicine. The prevalence of cat ownership (and toxoplasma infections) in a population has a correlative relationship to “variation in culture,” the study found. People infected by toxoplasma through contact with felines display symptoms that ultimately change the societies they live in: they can become more suspectible to “uncertainty avoidance,” which entails a preference for authoritative systems which control the lives of its participants as much as possible; they can adopt a specific set of values clustered around narcissism, materialism, and guilt-proneness; and their men can even lose intelligence and conscientiousness over time.

Does any of this sound familiar? Let’s delve even deeper. Apparently, cultures with a prevalence of cats were found to be prone to “uncertainty avoidance”: “Individuals in populations that rate high in the cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance feel threatened by uncertain or unknown situations, leading to a rule-oriented society geared to reduce uncertainty,” the study said. At the same time, toxoplasmosis can lead to individual recklessness. Those with toxoplasma infections are statistically much more likely to be in a car crash—one author infected with toxoplasmosis found himself brazenly walking into traffic, like a zombified rat running towards the scent of cat urine.

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Men and women infected by toxoplasma undergo changes in their gender expression. In contrast to the stoic image of a man and his dog, cat-infected men are more reckless, rigid, “frugal, reactive emotionally, changeable, affected by feelings, emotionally less stable and easily upset.” Toxoplasmosis can make men more jealous, dogmatic, and stupid. It can also increase their testosterone, which may be of utility to some. Women affected by the parasite seem to experience fewer distortive changes, and can in fact become more warm-hearted and outgoing after toxoplasma infection.

Overall though, societies with a prevalence of toxoplasma infections were found to prioritize “ego, ambition, money, material possessions, self-achievement and work” rather than “relationships, people, social support and quality of life.” The people living in these societies showed a higher degree of “guilt proneness,” a quality that can keep one trapped under authority. Although guilt, "an uncomfortable moral emotion that occurs when a person has transgressed a social norm,” is related to guilt-proneness, they are not identical. Guilt-proneness “is a personality trait that involves a lower threshold of experiencing guilt even when a transgression is private, or before the individual has done a transgression.” In other words, guilt-proneness evokes feelings of guilt even when one hasn’t done anything wrong.

The final, inexplicable tip of the iceberg is that Western countries seem most susceptible to mind control by cats. In non-Western nations, infection prevalence appears to be positively, but weakly associated with cultural dimensions of uncertainty avoidance. In contrast, when only Western nations were analyzed, this cultural dimension “increased significantly with the prevalence of T. gondii.” Who are the countries with the highest percentage of cat owners? Second to Russia sits The United States, where nearly half of all households harbor a cat.

After looking at all this evidence, things might begin to seem quite dark. Every proud civilization that fell first fattened itself for the slaughter; its people grew selfish, greedy, scared. The demise of Ancient Egypt, which collapsed after thousands of years, begins to look like the work of cats. While the Sea Peoples who extinguished the Bronze Age cultures were certainly not cat-human hybrids (Khajits), one wonders if cats hastened the decline of such cultures and made them easy fodder. Ditto for Rome, the medieval Middle East, and the modern West.

Is there no escape from the torment of cats and the parasites they harbor? After all, cats are quite literally everywhere, as are infected people. Well, the aforementioned study cites “dwelling among cats” and “high human densities” as the main causes of toxoplasma infection. It follows, then, that those living off-grid or in areas with lower populations are at a significantly lower risk of infection. Is it time to “leave society”? You decide.

Just don’t be surprised when you learn that you never owned a cat in your life; the cats own you.

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