This just in from the Cutting Edge of Science: Do cats cause depression?

Can't dog people and cat people just get along?

by Ken

It would be oversimplifying to suggest that the world is divided between dog people and cat people. After all, there are also none-of-the-above people, even within the pet-owning community, which includes such odd ducks as bird people and fish people and monkey people and ocelot people and (yuck!) lizard people and (God help us) reptile people. Oh, and there are also the occasional strange souls who straddle the dog and cat world.

It takes an intrepid spirit indeed to go public against either the dog or the cat lobby. Then again, it may be that dog people don't give a gosh darn what cat people think or say, and vice versa.

For the record, I'm Switzerland on this great divide. I grew up with dogs, but I later made my peace with cats. There was even a time when the pussycat who inhabited my workplace of the moment came over to me late one night when, in despair over the cruelty of the universe, I was doing some more-pointless-than-usual work and cuddled. Of course it might just have been his way of copping a cheap cuddle, but he really seemed to be responding sympathetically to my dark mood. Anyway, that was my story and I'm still sticking to it.

The point being that I'm emphatically not taking sides in the matter of this latest communiqué from the Cutting Edge of Science, namely: "Depressed? Blame It on Your Cat," the title of a post on "The Frisky" by Ami Angelowicz, the author of a previous "Relationship" column entitled "Confessions of a Woman Who Won't Date a Male Cat Owner," where she owned up to being "what you would traditionally consider a dog person," but also noted, "Sometimes I don't even like dogs." (This was no. 2 of her -- count 'em -- eight "reasons why I am thoroughly incompatible with male cat owners.")

Depressed? Blame It On Your Cat



Ami Angelowicz

I’ve never liked cats. I know this is an unpopular point of view, but the heart wants what the heart wants. And this heart wants everything of the feline persuasion to stay away from her. It’s the allergies, but also, I just don’t like the way they look at me. Should you want to join me in the pursuit of catless-ness, you might be interested to know that new research published in the PLOS ONE journal discovered a link between cat bites and depression.

In a study of 1.3 million people over the course of a decade, researchers found that there was a strong correlation between those who  sought treatment for a cat bite and those who sought treatment for depression. Although I hate to fuel the crazy cat lady trope, I should probably mention that a whopping 86 percent of those suffering from both a cat bite and depression were women. That means that about one half of female cat owners who’ve been bitten by a feline will become depressed. Help! I’m picturing a bad horror film featuring a bunch of feral cats and depressed women with festering bite wounds. Frightening, but why? Researchers have a few possible explanations.

Which came first the cat or the depression? It’s hard to say, scientists explain. Because having a cat as a pet has been shown to improve mood, which means it’s more likely that a depressed woman would own a cat for companionship. And because cat owners are more likely to be bitten than non-owners, that makes female cat owners the highest risk population for both afflictions. Researchers also theorize that cats may bite depressed owners more frequently as a reaction to their mental state because some animals “may bite more in response to changes in their owners’ mental state or level of responsiveness.” Last but certainly not least is the parasite theory. T. gondii, carried by cats and transmitted through their feces, can cause changes in the human brain. Infections from the parasite have been linked to increased self-harm, elevated suicide rates in women and depression.

So yeah, cats. Not so great.

Just as a reminder, the question we're concened with here is this Important New Scientific Revelation linking cats with depression. It gets pretty heavily mixed here with the question of what difference(s) there may be between male and female cat owners. For that matter, since the men in Ami's dating sample are all (presumptively) hetero, should the cat-ownership caution apply only to (presumptively) hetero male cat owners, or should this be of concern to anyone who may have occasion to date men?

On these questions I don't know whether the Cutting Edge of Science has weighed in.

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