She does, actually, with her willful refusal to pee in a litter box, but it may be literally true as well:
It’s almost impossible to hear about Flegr’s research without wondering whether you’re infected—especially if, like me, you’re a cat owner, favor very rare meat, and identify even a little bit with your Toxo sex stereotype. So before coming to Prague, I’d gotten tested for the parasite, but I didn’t yet know the results. It seemed a good time to see what his intuition would tell me. “Can you guess from observing someone whether they have the parasite—myself, for example?,” I ask.
“No,” he says, “the parasite’s effects on personality are very subtle.” If, as a woman, you were introverted before being infected, he says, the parasite won’t turn you into a raving extrovert. It might just make you a little less introverted. “I’m very typical of Toxoplasma males,” he continues. “But I don’t know whether my personality traits have anything to do with the infection. It’s impossible to say for any one individual. You usually need about 50 people who are infected and 50 who are not, in order to see a statistically significant difference. The vast majority of people will have no idea they’re infected.”
A long, but fascinating article.
I’ve read that the infection rate in France is as high as >80%, largely due to the consumption of undercooked meat. No idea how true that is, but the need for thorough cooking remains. Also, do not eat roadkill, no matter how tempting and delicious it may appear.
I’ve never met a man who doesn’t like meat as rare as possible. I suppose they must exist, I’ve just never met any.
‘sup?
Yo
I knew one woman who liked her meat red rare. Most that I’ve been around like it cooked extremely dead.
Maybe she had the ‘spasmosis…
What this article does not state is that the toxioplasmosis from a kitty only can happen at a small part of a cats life. Most of the risk of that parasite is from eating too raw meat.
The spores in the scat take a few days to become infectious. If you scoop daily, not really a problem.
Actually it does, somewhere late on the second page, along with saying that indoor/house cats are generally free of the parasite.
Might explain the common literary trope that supervillains love cats.
But Hitler loved dogs, so what the hey.
And the Son of Sam.