Cats can make you crazy, but not that crazy

Wailing and yowling through the house in the middle of the night, zig-zagging in front of you as you try make your way down the stairs, batting and clawing your feet when you tie your shoes — there’s plenty of ways cats can make one a little crazy, but probably not clinically so if new research is correct.

A study scrutinizing the suggested connection between cat ownership in childhood and later psychiatric illness might just poke holes in some other scientific studies that have pointed to pet cats as a cause of some types of mental illness.

The premise of these theories begins with toxoplasma gondii, a parasite hosted primarily by cats that can infect other warm-blooded creatures including humans. Toxoplasma gondii infection in young children causes early neurodevelopment issues and has been linked to later-life psychotic conditions, specifically schizophrenia.

Based on this link, in recent years researchers have sought to draw a correlation between exposure to cats in childhood and mental illness later in life.

With studies concluding that high numbers of patients with psychotic illnesses did own cats in childhood — for instance, a 2015 study by the Stanley Medical Research Institute queried 2,000 people living with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and found a little more than half had lived in a home with a cat during childhood — the subsequent headlines placed pet cats under a cloud of suspicion.

However, it’s premature to blame cats for mental illnesses, according to Cambridge researchers, who released a report in late February detailing information they analyzed from a birth cohort study begun in the 1990s.

The data they used was drawn from a long-range study of children born in England between 1991-1992, which periodically had families complete questionnaires and evaluations. Rather than relying on participant memories of what pets were in the home years ago, as the other studies have, the researchers say the strength of this data is that it was reported at the time the answers were relevant, allowing researchers to more accurately identify those subjects whose families owned cats during pregnancy and/or childhood.

Compared to data on psychotic experiences by between 4,600 and 6,705 of pre-teen and teenage children tracked in the study, the researchers report they found absolutely no link between owning cats in childhood and early symptoms — full diagnoses of psychotic illnesses aren’t made until adulthood, which the data didn’t measure — of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.

While cats are the primary-known hosts of toxoplasma gondii and can pass it along to humans through their feces, the parasite is also found in contaminated water and undercooked or raw meats.

Which means warnings that have been given for decades — expecting mothers should not clean cat litter boxes, young children need to be kept away from cat feces by supervising them and doing things such as covering backyard sandboxes to keep neighborhood cats out — still need to be followed.

But blaming childhood pet cats for development of mental illness in adulthood, according to the new research, is going too far.

In essence, the new findings can be interpreted to mean nothing has changed, love your cats, let the kiddos love them too — just be vigilant about cleaning up after kitty in homes with expecting mothers and young children — and breathe a sigh of relief, or, purr in vindication as you see fit.

Sharna Johnson is always searching for ponies. You can reach her at: [email protected]