Perspective: Cats dethroned, dogs take the lead

Are you a dog person or a cat person? The age old question pits ordinarily friendly neighbours to opposite sides of the pet shop.

Most Dolphin Coast residents, apparently, are dog people.

According to Roots (SA’s largest consumer survey), 53% of residents in the wider Ballito area own a dog, compared to an average of 45% in other similar small metros surveyed (Maritzburg, PE and the like).

Surprisingly only 4% own a cat, with other small metros showing an average of 7%.

Kevin Stevens from Ballito Veterinary Hospital confirmed to me that their clients have a lot more dogs than cats.

I really thought cats were more popular than that. Perhaps the restrictions against cat ownership that so many estates have in place is partly at play here.

Or are locals bird lovers and so prefer not to own cats?

It would be quite interesting to find out the why behind the statistics.

Growing up we always had both. My dad is the cat lover (mom tolerates them out of love for my dad).

A story that has taken on legend status in our family unfolded while I was in high school.

My good friend Marie Morrison (nee Kuehl) asked me to look after her beloved family cat, Mia, while they were abroad for six months.

Her parents are American missionaries and so they had moved around a good deal growing up.

Mia had managed to stay with them all this time and so, as you can imagine, they were very attached to her.

There was only one problem. Mia was not fond of dogs. So the dogs were banned from the house and Mia took up residence in the spare bedroom.

I kept a close watch on her and we were planning on letting everyone get to know one another very slowly, in a controlled environment.

Needless to say, that did not pan out as planned. I had let Mia out of her room to explore the house when my father arrived home unexpectedly.

When he opened the door the dogs barged in past him (they had been smelling strange cat for three days and by now the excitement was unparalleled).

Mia took off like a pocket rocket, scratching me badly in her determination to escape the excitable hounds and shot straight up a tree and over the wall.

Just like that she was gone. I was devastated. What would I tell Marie and, even worse, her little brother and sister?

In the days that followed I had hundreds of posters of Mia made and pasted them all over town (this was before WhatsApp and Facebook).

Incredibly Mia resurfaced halfway across town two weeks later and the kind family who fed her when she began mewing for dinner spotted my poster.

But not before my dad had visited the local SPCA looking for her (he was feeling rather guilty for letting the dogs in).

No Mia, but he arrived home (to my mother’s horror) with a sweet black and white bundle we later named Socks.

The way my mom tells the story, my dad cannot so much as look at a stray cat without bringing it home.

Since leaving home I have developed a cat hair allergy, but still whenever I visit the vet I am tempted to take home one of the sweet little kittens waiting for new homes.

Perhaps I have been infected by Toxoplasma gondii or “Crazy cat-lady syndrome”.

Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite that can live in many kinds of animals, although it can only reproduce in the gut of a domestic or wild cat.

I once watched a documentary that described how the parasite uses mice to complete its life cycle.

In laymen terms the parasite makes mice unafraid and even attracted to cats.

The mice are eaten and the parasite is able to reproduce. Clever né? Also kinda creepy.

Humans can carry the parasite but so far it looks like it doesn’t harm us too much.

Except, as Kevin Stevens warned me, pregnant woman who did not grow up with cats should be careful as becoming infected while pregnant could harm your unborn baby.

But don’t freak out and sell your cat, some researches estimate that up to half of the world’s population is already infected by toxoplasmosis, but have no symptoms.

And there could be unexpected benefits (other than making you keen on cats).

If you want to be the next Elon Musk you also might consider getting a cat.

Research by the University of Colorado found that people infected by the parasite were more likely to take risks and more likely to go into business.

They tested a bunch of university students and almost 1,500 students who tested positive for exposure to T. gondii were 1.4 times more likely to be a business major.

They were also 1.7 times more likely to have an emphasis on ‘management and entrepreneurship’.

So a mind-altering parasite could be your ticket to success, but then the research is hardly conclusive.

The neighbourhood is going to the dogs after all.

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