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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
Why We Love Cats1/08/2008 13:32:31Cats elicit strong feelings in people. There are "cat ladies" and cat poisoners. For my part, I had two cats when I was a kid and loved them dearly. Seeing cats now has become an occasion for excitement, remembering their qualified loyalty and inimitable stares. But I was reminded of the stronger passions that cats evoke (and the conflicts between them) when I saw the following sign yesterday posted in front of an apartment building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn:  This brings me to recent lines in my thinking about what makes us do what we do. What causes such strong feelings in us, such that one might fill one's house with cats to the point that the neighbors would try to poison them? Scientists have lately been investigating parasites called Toxoplasma, which can only reproduce in the digestive system of a cat. When it infects a rat, it actually causes the poor creature to be drawn to cat urine and thereby to being eaten. This week a short article in The Economist wonders whether this parasite has anything to do with cat lady behavior, and whether, in due course, the parasite has put humans in the position of being eaten by cats. Which of course is what the Toxoplasma want. Another parasite, Dicrocoelium dendriticum, causes infected ants to climb to the top of blades of grass in order to be eaten by cows, whose immune systems it needs to be fruitful and multiply. Daniel Dennett begins his vitriolic Breaking the Spell by suggesting that what this parasite does to ants is analogous to what religion memes do to humans. On the friendlier side, a recent scientific book has summarized "the behavioral biology of dogs", making clear just how much these animals and humans have co-evolved together. Reading this review shook me out of the idea I had when I was little that maybe someday we would all agree with the radicals that all pets must be liberated. In fact, domestic dogs have so thoroughly evolved for living with people that it is hard to imagine anything more natural for them (or for us to need them as some do). I guess the point of these anecdotes is to bring to mind this fantastic, biological integration that connects us with the animals we are connected to. It is sometime fearsome, and we humans should question the assumption that we are always the masters, the ones in control. The strange, childish love that comes over me when I see a cat these days may be driven by a little parasite that wants nothing but to get inside those cats' bellies. And come to think of it, I'm not sure I wouldn't mind terribly being eaten by a cat, so long as I'm dead already. |
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