Who knows what the net affect is but taking the final sentences of some of the results paragraphs makes it seem like taking care of a cat is a good idea:
> [...] Therefore, cat ownership may be involved in mediating the abundance of disease-related gut microbes.
> [...] Therefore, from the perspective of gut microbiota, our study not only supports that there might be no correlation between cat ownership and obesity but also clarifies that cat ownership can affect the structure and function of gut microbiota in NW [normal weight] individuals.
Including all of this next paragraph as it all seems good...
> Functional predictions indicated that cat ownership would lead to increased synthesis of B vitamins, amino acids and carbohydrate metabolism. Moreover, SCFA-related pathways (4-hydroxyphenylacetate degradation, TCA cycle VII (acetate producers), and glycerol degradation to butanol) were significantly increased. As the biosynthetic precursor of cofactors, vitamins play a vital role in organisms. The gut microbiota can provide various vitamins for the host [41]. Increasing glucose metabolism in the gut microbiota may be beneficial to host blood glucose control [42]. SCFAs can participate in intestinal epithelial energy supply, affect the intestinal environment (such as pH and electrolyte balance), and regulate host material and energy metabolism. SCFAs are related to the occurrence of various energy metabolism diseases. SCFAs have anti-inflammatory effects. Therefore, the influence of cat ownership on gut microbiota function may affect the health of the owner.
As long as you keep it inside (where it isn't defecating in my garden, hunting my chickens or trying to get inside where I may lock it in by accident causing mayhem, etc, I'd like my pregnant wife to still be able to do gardening and also I like eating things from my garden).
I live in a country where it is legal to just keep you cat outside all day. It's madness.
Actually, keeping your cat inside should be the norm. Cats are, essentially, a highly invasive species that has been linked to massive decline and sometimes extinctions of local fauna.
Countries that have had domestic and wild cats for millennia are mostly unaffected by domestic cats being outside, especially in urban areas where wildlife is overrun by vermin.
Yes, there are plenty of examples of cats causing issues, but only in locations where they were introduced and not where they are native. Australia is a good example, as domesticated cats have become a nuisance and bred in the wild. But then you look at what has happened since the cat population was culled, with the many videos of mice on farms. Removing them isn't a perfect solution, as they've been around long enough to become a part of the ecosystem and not just a destructive force.
I would also qualify this with; cats should be kept inside whilst in heat. Many of the issues caused by cats are due to owners letting their cats reproduce. Where cats have a good supply of food, naturally they will reproduce up to a balancing point with the available food. Many cat owners are unaware (or just don't care) about cats reproducing and the impact that has. Spaying/neutering is also a viable option if owners don't want to have to lock their cats in during their heat cycle - cats birthing can be traumatic for the mother, so this can be a major benefit. Similarly, male cats will mate with multiple females so neutering is many times more effective than spaying alone.
Spaying/neutering should be the default option, unless you have a specific wish to breed your cats, and then you should have a plan for it and do so responsibly.
Despite the large numbers of birds killed by cats in gardens, there is no clear scientific evidence that such mortality is causing bird populations to decline. This may be surprising, but many millions of birds die naturally every year, mainly through starvation, disease or other forms of predation. There is evidence that cats tend to take weak or sickly birds.
We also know that of the millions of baby birds hatched each year, most will die before they reach breeding age. This is also quite natural, and each pair needs only to rear two young that survive to breeding age to replace themselves and maintain the population.
It is likely that most of the birds killed by cats would have died anyway from other causes before the next breeding season, so cats are unlikely to have a major impact on populations. If their predation was additional to these other causes of mortality, this might have a serious impact on bird populations.
Those bird species which have undergone the most serious population declines in the UK (such as skylarks, tree sparrows and corn buntings) rarely encounter cats, so cats cannot be causing their declines. Research shows that these declines are usually caused by habitat change or loss, particularly on farmland.
>Actually, keeping your cat inside should be the norm.
Not in Europe, maybe new zealand. But in Europe we had/have wildcats until we destroyed the large forests. And nearly ever farmer depends on a cat to keep vermin's in check, if you have to keep your cat inside DONT BUY A CAT.
"Those bird species which have undergone the most serious population declines in the UK (such as skylarks, tree sparrows and corn buntings) rarely encounter cats, so cats cannot be causing their declines. Research shows that these declines are usually caused by habitat change or loss, particularly on farmland."
Still autochtonous (more or less) species. Old world birds evolved with them for thousands years and somehow they will not have problems to survive.
We know to do more research about the cat effect on that fauna instead to just repeat one preliminary study.
We need to know for example, if there is a percentage of those migrant birds allegedly chased by cats in US that just crashed against a window or were stunded by pesticides. The problem in that case is not the cat, is the glass pane, or the absence of trees.
...............
Second point. Some scientists hypothesize that Toxoplasmosis remain in the body alive for years and is a chronic disease. We should however take in mind that this is not the main current of thinking.
We know that parasites don't survive usually when end in the wrong host because immune response works "like this" and "like that" and because the temperature, organ structure or life cycle of the true host, matter for the parasite survival.
I can't see why Toxoplasma should behave different that the other ten thousands of cases, or why the immune system should make an excepcion here.
Yeah I have friends that work in shelters and cat sanctuaries and given the unhealthy state of the cats that come in to them, it's pretty crystal clear that life outside is not at all that good for a cat.
When I walk about my 'hood I do see pet cats enjoying a time being outside, but it does not take much bad luck for their fortunes to turn rapidly, due to getting lost and deadly encounters with cars and coyotes.
Given how many of those get scars from fighting or disappear I'm not very convinced those are happier either. Dogs chained to a flat - sure, that'd be clearly not great for them but cats seem very comfortable being indoors only.
WOW you have a pretty twisted mind about cats...had 4 cat and non of them had scars..well one of them had scars but it was a Norwegian forestcat who got in fights with fox's...and dog's and my shoe laces....but hey i hope you never have kids.
BTW: Now i have a Dog and he can come a go as he wish...podengo mix...so half dog half cat.
There are widely known effects of growing up with a dog on immune system strength and proneness to allergies [0]. I have never seen these associated with gut fauna, but the implication is that some of the 'dog gross' gets onto you and trains your system.
How odd. I spent my childhood inna constant state of hayfever. A major revelation for me was going off to university, where I was no longer around the household dogs, and my allergies all but disapated.
Where I live most people with dogs either let them poop in nature or clean it up. They certainly don't come into my garden to do their business.
Telling someone to take a huge pet with huge responsibilities just to get rid of neighborhood cats pooping in their garden is a bit of a non-solution.
But I guess, it's all funny when you own and love cats. But, please try to imagine what it can be like for your neighbors who only experience the down sides of your pet. To me there is no difference between (huge) rats or cats coming into my garden, except the government allows me to kill the rats.
This, in my opinion, is why we can't have nice things. Calling for the death of any living thing that we disagree with isn't okay. And trapping an animal indoors where it can't exercise its natural tendencies is also a non-solution.
I completely understand the want and need to protect your property from intruders, animal or human. But calling for the death of any and all animals that enter your property is borderline psychopathic IMO.
There are humane ways to deter animals from entering your property. Something as simple as spraying a cat with water will deter it effectively - no need to murder it. Other options include putting down plastic spikes (that don't cause injury) on garden fences, growing certain plants which cats dislike the smell of, or even sprays that cats dislike.
And for future reference; if your neighbours cats are pooping in your garden beds, keep the surface of the soil moist. Cats (generally) won't dig in wet soil, and will instead find somewhere else to go. And your plants will appreciate the extra water.
I'm not killing any animals, I wouldn't even kill the rats, I was just indicating the arbitrary line between vermin and pets. We have frogs, hedgehogs and in parts of our town sometimes even a fox (and they kill chickens if you don't close the hen). I think it's beautiful. Not the same as the high concentration of cats we have in our urban area. One of our neighbors has 4 cats, and they all shit in the area directly around her yard. And they are the reason I can't leave the chickens alone outside during the day.
And believe me, nothing deters cats, me and my cat-less neighbors have tried everything under the sun. I splashed them with water multiple times already. Sure, it's all fun when the cat sits in a box and is cuddly. But it's a roaming predator that spreads excrement and disease. And if you don't cuddle with it regularly, that's all it is.
And how can you tell me to keep my soil moist, do you know what an amount of work that is? Cat owners should come and keep my soil moist. Or, just keep their cat inside.
If you love your animals, go live on a farm or in the woods. The city is no place for pets like cats.
> I can't leave the chickens alone outside during the day.
...
> If you love your animals, go live on a farm or in the woods. The city is no place for pets like cats.
So you say cats shouldn't be in cities, but chickens should be?
Cats have been living in cities for many centuries. Some cities have more outdoor cats than others. If you live in a city with too many outdoor cats, you could always try moving to a different city, or you could follow your own advice and go live in a more rural area.
I have to leave because it’s normal that cats shit in other people’s gardens? How would they feel if I let my chickens roam free, shitting everywhere, giving your pregnant wife toxoplasmosis, picking at the eyes of your small pets in your garden?
You don't "have" to leave. Nor do the cat owners. My point is you can't arbitrarily and unilaterally decide that one type of pet is OK and another type of pet "doesn't belong in cities" and should be banished to a farm. There are far more cat owners than chicken owners in cities! And I am sure some people do not like the sounds or smells of having a neighbor with chickens.
It sounds like your real issue is that your neighbors are irresponsible jerks who don't put any effort into managing their pets' behavior. I can relate -- I sure wish my upstairs neighbors would hire a dog trainer, instead of loudly shouting "stop it!" at their dog who audibly barks over a hundred times a day. It's utterly ruining my quality of life. But I wouldn't proclaim that dogs "don't belong in cities" just because my upstairs neighbors happen to be jerks.
Before we got the chickens we told both neighbors and assured them that if they ever felt bothered by them they should say so and we would look for a solution. Certainly if one would turn out to be a rooster we would take action. So far they never make sounds and they just roam around our (100 m2) garden, on the grass all day. Neighbors with cats act annoyed when you talk to them about their cats roaming the gardens. Because cats are normal.
I feel for you regarding the dog situation. honestly if you would ask me, an apartment complex is no place for a big dog. We held off on taking a dog because there is no place for it to run in the immediate area. But indeed it probably wouldn't be a problem if your neighbors acted responsibly, and that is where indeed all problems originate.
> They certainly don't come into my garden to do their business.
It's only a small fraction of dog owners but in my city - and a lot more after COVID isolation which seems to have increased pet dog population noticeably around here - dog poop is regularly found on city side walks. I can find articles with complaints about dog poop on (for me, German) sidewalks easily, much harder than finding complaints about cat poop (Google search, German words: endless list for dogs, a single page with only two real matches). Of course, a big part of it, apart from cats trying to hide theirs, is that dogs are forced to be on sidewalks by having to be on a leash so it's not a completely fair comparison for dogs.
The cats (mostly in the more affluent suburbs that I live close to so I walk through there a lot in the evenings because there's a lot of green) don't leave any traces that I ever saw (I see one to a few cats every evening though, they are not all kept inside).
As a cat lover (without a cat since my living conditions don't make for a good cat space), I hope some day we get genetically modified cats that have no interest in birds. We have plenty of rats and mice around here though, in the shrubbery. Easy to hear and - if you care to look - see them run underneath the fallen leaves at dusk. Definitely would be great to have more car- and bird-repsecting cats around here, in the greener parts of the city!
>>I live in a country where it is legal to just keep you cat outside all day. It's madness.
As someone who lived most of my life in the countryside and our cats only lived outside, I will echo some of the other comments - is there anywhere where you can't keep a cat outside???? That's madness.
Not every place is the same situation, but I can definitely think of a lot of reasons why a particular area wouldn't be appropriate to let cats roam about.
In my experience yes, but only if you don't feed them. Then they go and hunt birds and other animals. If you give them plenty of food then they just chill all day.
Humans are outdoor animals. Yes. Well done. A+. We even have opposable thumbs, which means we can operate door handles and make our own way outside. Or are you asking us to demolish our houses and live out in the farmland now?
We build homes for warmth and security. Even our nomadic ancestors built movable homes (tents, teepees, caravans, mobile homes, RVs etc.). Just because an animal is supposed to be outside, doesn't mean it has no benefit from access to an indoor area. The rules for survival fit animals just as much; 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food. The numbers will be different, but if an animal cannot find shelter on a cold night, it's unlikely to survive (unless specifically adapted for that situation).
I live in a downtown area where there are many cats walking around. They used to poop all over my garden, but I think I may have found a solution but I am not sure.
I read that cats dislike the smell of coffee. So to experiment, I would cover the pile of cat poop with a large pile of coffee grounds. In my experience so far the cats do not return to poop in that spot like they would before.
It is also not illegal to add plants that are poisonous to cats on the border of your property.
My family and I are all sound sleepers who sleep on our backs. Our cat, from the first day we acquired her at the pound until her last, would go from chest to chest during the night. There are few things nicer than waking up in the morning to a cat purring on your chest.
My father started locking the cat out of my parents bedroom when he got into his 60s because "I'd wake up with the cat on my chest thinking I was having a heart attack."
We learned years ago that our cats get put in the lower part of our house with the door closed at night. We felt bad about it, but being able to sleep all night made up for it.
Quick story: for several nights, I'd wake up in the middle of the night with horrendous stomach pains. I was thinking I needed to see the doctor it was so painful. Then on the fourth night when the pain hit I woke up fast enough to notice our cat walking off of my stomach. Turns out he (a 15 lb cat) had been jumping off a shelf through the air about 6 feet and landing directly on my gut. This was instrumental in the decision to keep them away from us ;)
A doctor could order a polysomnography and observe the patient sleeping. The cat will not be present in controlled environments so the test result will be a false negative. The issue is closed as unable to reproduce...
Take 2 of these and call me in the morning. We might need to adjust the dose, or we could try something else. Let's make a weekly schedule so we can keep trying different things.
**Doctor immediately starts thinking about that vacation he's going to be able to take from the extra insurance claims from this one patient alone
By the way, the common myth is misleading. Toxoplasmosis is almost always caused by undercooked meat, which is why it's so much more common in France. You can get it from cats but it's almost always stray cats, not house cats.
"Pork, lamb, and mutton are the most important sources of T gondii infection, along with game meats such as bear and feral swine."
"A total of 252 women with toxoplasmosis, along with 748 controls from Naples, Lausanne, Copenhagen, Oslo, Brussels, and Milan, were interviewed by telephone or in person. Overall, eating raw or undercooked beef, lamb, or other meats; contact with soil; and travel outside the country were major sources of infection."
Cats don't even make the list of major sources of infection. Further,
"The association of cats and human toxoplasmosis is difficult to assess by epidemiological surveys because soil, not the cats, is the main culprit. Oocysts are not found on cat fur and are often buried in soil along with cat faeces.11 Therefore, direct contact with cats is irrelevant with respect to T gondii transmission, and soil contact is universal and difficult to avoid."
Do you have a source for that? (I'm not doubting; I'm looking for further reading on the subject, as I've been curious about toxoplasmosis since first getting my own cats over a decade ago...)
"Pork, lamb, and mutton are the most important sources of T gondii infection, along with game meats such as bear and feral swine."
"A total of 252 women with toxoplasmosis, along with 748 controls from Naples, Lausanne, Copenhagen, Oslo, Brussels, and Milan, were interviewed by telephone or in person. Overall, eating raw or undercooked beef, lamb, or other meats; contact with soil; and travel outside the country were major sources of infection."
Cats don't even make the list of major sources of infection.
Further,
"The association of cats and human toxoplasmosis is difficult to assess by epidemiological surveys because soil, not the cats, is the main culprit. Oocysts are not found on cat fur and are often buried in soil along with cat faeces.11 Therefore, direct contact with cats is irrelevant with respect to T gondii transmission, and soil contact is universal and difficult to avoid."
He's down to 12 lbs, we adopted him when he was 7 years old and weighed 17 lbs as his previous owners kept him in a single room. But thanks for judging me sans facts, internet stranger!
In addition to the coyotes that everyone else has mentioned, this is also terrible for other animals in the neighborhood.
Cats are FEROCIOUS hunters, and can quickly have a deleterious effect on the local small wildlife. On top of this, they frequently patrol other people's property, and, if they have indoor cats, can cause serious stress to said indoor cats.
Because they are an invasive species and will decimate birds and other critters, messing up the ecosystem in your neighbourhood and causing a lot of animal suffering. Also they will acquire toxoplasmosis and transmit it to you and your family.
Was awakened one morning by a horrible shrieking noise coming from somewhere else in the house. When I got up to check what had happened my wife was freaking out because there was something under one of the orange trees in the back yard that she didn't like.
One of the neighbors had a very fluffy cat they would let outside, who liked to loaf in the lower branches of our orange trees and my wife likes watching cats lounge about.
Well that particular morning she witnesses a coyote appear from nowhere and snatch the cat. By the time I ran it off, the only thing left of the cat was a pile of fur and it's tail. The coyote jumped over the 6ft tall cinder block fence with the rest of the cat like it wasn't there and ran off.
It was pretty common for cats to go missing in the area and very few folks would heed the warnings about small pets being allowed out.
Coyotes are plentiful nowadays and they eat lots of cats, cats are a major source of food for urban coyotes. That's not even mentioning other mortal dangers to cats outside like getting hit by a car
The corollary to that is I don't want my cat to endanger/kill wildlife or bother my neighbors
I'd contest that this is true in general but depend a lot on location - most of the points there don't apply everywhere (albeit I can just assume the vast majority of residential houses in the US).
One more thing that's not mentioned explicitly in that paper that can be good to keep in mind is also that cats can be territorial with the core territory generally having a diameter of 100m - so any neighboring cats close enough can often become an issue.
In general I do think that cats are thriving best when they can roam the outdoors, but it's a very small and shrinking amount of global human-habitated land where that is a good idea. Thinking of this makes me a bit sad for the species.
Growing up we had cats who could come in and out as they wanted. Very rural area in Europe with little traffic or predators. One got hit by a car, one got taken by a fox (both within their first 5 years), one disappeared at 10 (also fox?), one lived to 17 until she died of old age, and one is still around at ~12 (estimated; local stray cat that came included with my parents' new house).
That being said, I am sure you have considered everything and is doing what's best for the cat within your abilities. But maybe see if you can get him some exercise ;)
My most recent cat, who sadly died a couple years ago, was unusually snuggly. We slept in physical contact, often spooning some or all of the night, for most of the 12 years I had her. She was particularly well adapted to me, my habits and my schedule… I was very fortunate!
I had a really rough bout of insomnia, along with a bad mental health stretch not long after she died. I didn’t make the connection until recently that sleep without my cat might have contributed.
But now I have a particularly snuggly pup, which has improved my quality of sleep beyond even that previous high point. We definitely have to adapt more to each other’s schedule. But it’s surprisingly mutual adaptation, and surprisingly malleable.
Sorry for the long personal response. I have no idea how much wiggle room there is with your cat(s), but I hope you find the benefits of the relationship worth whatever tradeoffs come with the sleep schedule.
My cat acted like she wanted to spoon, but her dastardly plan was to seize the exact center of the bed, and she was relentless at it. Like a chess player. Every night I'd wake up curled around the edges.
So I guess I must be the first person dominated by the iron whim of a cat.
> "Sixty percent of cat owners sleep with their cats, which may enhance their sense of security and improve their quality of sleep"
I regularly open my eyes in the middle of the night and my cat's face is about 5 inches away from mine, just sitting there perfectly still, staring at me.
When I was a teenager I was having an odd dream of my nose really tickling as I came out of a deep sleep. I finally opened my eyes to see my Siamese sitting on my chest holding a struggling mouse by the tail over my snoring mouth. Its front paws had been scrabbling just on the edge of my upper lip.
Lol (and gross!). My mom used to freak out when my cat used to bring such "gifts" for us (mostly mouse, occassionally squirrels that my mom would ask me to rescue, pissing off the cat) or just try to show-off to us what an apex predator he was by bringing his prey inside the house. The peak highlight was when I heard my mom scream one day and rushed to find her on top of the dining table as he had caught a 3 foot thin snake, already half dead, that he was enjoying chasing around inside the house.
I opened the door once one morning for my cat who was meowing. Big mistake! He started doing in on a regular basis of course. Ignoring him didn't work, so I started getting up and closing him in the basement until I got up a few hours later. After a few days of this, I'd open my door and he'd walk to the basement so I could shut him in. It took about 2 months, but he eventually quit the meowing.
New rule: never, ever, open a door when a cat meows. If I'm ready to get up and my cats hear me rustling around and start meowing, I wait until they have stopped meowing for 15 minutes before opening the door.
My kid's cat - I've taken care of since they've left for college - started scratching at the bedroom door earlier and earlier in the morning - because that's when it was fed.
Now, it's fed at bedtime so it doesn't care what time I get up.
Yeah our cat's big meal is in the morning , I randomly change around when in my morning routine I feed them so they don't assume that just cos I'm up and about they'll be getting fed. It helped with them making noises at the door as soon as my alarm goes off in the morning (we kick them out if they're annoying at night).
Otherwise they'd assume every time I open the door to go to the toilet or whatever is meal time.
In my case, it demolishes any chance of restful sleep. She literally walks all over me. She'll meow at the door if I shut the door. So it's either meows or walking. It's a ... nightmare.
It may be frowned upon, but we communicated to our cats that meowing at the door was not acceptable by discouraging them with a vacuum cleaner. Flip the switch on the vacuum and run the cord under the door to your bed side. Upon meow, quietly plug the vacuum in to activate -- if the cat senses that you activated the device, the process doesn't work. If "the environment" doesn't want them to meow at the door, they learn quickly.
Of course give them lots of love in the morning and before bed.
I tried programming my arduino to trigger a servo to pull the handle on a spray air can when a sound over a threshold was detected by the microphone, but the servo wasn't strong enough. Enabling an outlet to an already-plugged in vacuum sounds good, though. Excellent...
I had plans to train a cat meow classifier so I wouldn't activate the can due to other noises, say a fire truck, fireworks, or a neighbor slamming a door shut.
We have one of those, they're good but the refills are strangely expensive.
Turns out they fit some standard brands of canned air, I picked up some branded "ecomoist air duster" and it works really well, although slightly quieter, it still seems to work on our kitty.
My cat hates the robot vacuum cleaner, but has also figured out she can turn it on with it's capacitive buttons to wake us up or get attention in the middle of the night...
Yeah, our cat hated the vacuum cleaner at first but having seen us using it regularly she now sleeps through it even if we hoover around her. They're pretty quick to accept things when they associate it with a trusted person.
In the past year, the biggest quality of life improvements in our household were:
- changing the door handles to door knobs, because our lovable asshole had long ago figured out how to open a door, and used that special trick every morning at 4:30am when he wanted to go out.
- installing an RFID triggered electronic cat flap that we installed in the outside wall of my hobby room. It uses the RFID tag that was already in implanted in his neck. Ours is one from Sure Petcare, but there are multiple brands of course.
The cat flap is amazing: it took roughly 1 day to teach him how to open and close it, and now he can leave and enter the house as he wishes: he usually leaves around 4:30am and comes back an hour or two later. We're extraordinary lucky that he taught himself to do this potty business outside, so we don't have a litter box.
Once he learned how to use the flap, he stopped bothering us at night.
An additional benefit is that we can now go out for a weekend without locking him up, using an automated feeder to make sure he stays happy. We can also check leaving/entering activity on an app.
The "Sure" flaps are great. We keep our cats in at night, and have the flap programmed to only allow inbound after 8pm, until about 6am (at this time of year), and it keeps other cats out.
Cruel as it may sound, you could try establishing dominance.
We have a male cat who would meow EVERY MORNING sometime between 2 and 4 am. We tried many kinds of discipline, but it didn't stop until one morning I chased him into hiding downstairs and it hasn't happened since. Every morning after for about a week I would go out of my way to thank him and give him attention.
I know many out there would say that running after him was cruel but it worked and he's still as friendly as can be, and we get to sleep through each night.
This is something that comes up more with human/dog relationships but I think it’s worth mentioning here too: there’s nothing wrong with this as a training approach if, and because, the pet trusts you and baseline feels safe with you. If they feel unsafe or haven’t made that assessment it can be traumatic and even personality-altering.
I don’t want to discourage anyone from any kind of safe, instinct triggering corrective action. But I do recommend something similar to what people say about human child discipline: act consistently and with intent.
Don’t accept some instances of a bad behavior sometimes and correct others; if you’ve decided this is your approach stick with it unless you see harm in following through. Don’t overreact out of frustration; think through what you’re going to do, and be sure it’s safe and something you’re gonna be comfortable reflecting on when it’s over.
Not the original poster but I’m going to seriously consider this. I’m at my wits end with a male cat who habitually meows at 2 am and 5 am point blank in front of my face.
I had a kitten that was relentless with her biting. One day she bit my hand, and without thinking I leaned down and not her ear. She never bit me after that.
Close door. Ignore meows. If meows continue or start up in the middle of the night and you can't ignore them, open the door suddenly, hiss at the cat and chase it away.
You won't have to do this often. Our cats have (mostly) learned this. They are still affectionate, loving cats that desire our company, but they know that meowing at the bedroom door in the night is not allowed.
(and we had to do this for the very same reason, our boy cat loves to be on the bed with us or in the room when we're sleeping. He loves it so much he has to get up and move around every few minutes, trill and purr at us, demand attention, walk around on his people etc etc. He can't be a night-time bed cat because he's just too into it!)
This is good advice but it’s going to vary by human more than pet. I have a lot better track record developing patience and a good discipline relationship with my pets by actively engaging, because I’m cognitively (ADHD, ASD) incapable of ignoring a lot of things and trying to force it brings out my worst, least intentional self.
Getting an automatic feeder has helped a lot. The cats used to wake us up at 3AM for food. Now it's much better. One of them still comes in at around 5:30AM to play, but that's not so bad.
not surprising giving that the cats are night hunters. With age though our cat was meowing if we were still up starting around 12am and until we'd go to bed, basically he was enforcing our the typical routine (and yes, he was sleeping with us, and the cats are big on routine)
I'm a light sleeper and cat ownership has definitely worsen my sleep since they occasionally wake me up by making noise. I'd definitely not recommend a cat to someone hoping it will improve their sleep.
You must have had the same cats as I did, mine would figure some way to get into my room (either by hitting the door to dislodge the latch, or climbing up the roof to my 2nd storey window) and "ask" (demand?) me to feed them at 5.30am...
If I'm reading the scatter plots correctly, it looks like the differences in the means between the two populations is much smaller than the one-sigma variation within each population. So while the correlations may technically be statistically significant, they aren't necessarily impactful.
This is exactly the intuition behind Cohen’s d — the standard unit of comparison for meta-analysis. You take the mean difference between the treatment group and the control group, and divide that number by the standard deviation of the dependent variable, and then assess that result in many studies to see which treatment, or class of treatments, moved the needle the most.
Interesting, but it seems not entirely implausible that the effect could work in the opposite direction, if gut microbiota influence behavior at all (behavior such as adopting small furry animals).
This co-habitation stuff is pretty interesting, but it'd be good to skip some steps and just analyse gut microbiota. You can literally buy a Leucaena inoculum for cattle so they can eat Leucaena. The tech seems better in cows than people.
> A common argument in the debate about whether cat ownership is ethical involves the question of toxoplasma gondii transmission to humans.[58] Even though "living in a household with a cat that used a litter box was strongly associated with infection,"[32] and that living with several kittens or any cat under one year of age has some significance,[59] several other studies claim to have shown that living in a household with a cat is not a significant risk factor for T. gondii infection. [49][60]
I got turned on to gut bacteria a couple+ years back after reading a feature article in the NY Times Sunday Magazine.
While it didn't say so directly, a theory I took away from that article was that gut bacteria affects longevity. That is, couples live longer because they have more robust gut bacteria; pet owners much the same.
Might there also be an emotional component to a longer and healthier life? Absolutely. Humans are complex systems. Nonetheless, the science and data seem to also be saying The Gut plays a significant role as well. It will be interesting to see how pandemic isolation (as well as ongoing WFH) affects long term (gut) health.
Well, people living in close proximity exchange gut bacteria. A more robust gut is a boost to general health (e.g., immune system). You also get good bacteria from pets (e.g., dogs).
On the other hand, when you live alone your gut doesn't get these benefits. So while it looks like there's an emotional-based downfall to living alone, it might also be the lack of gut diversity that cuts into your health and longevity.
> Through self-reporting, we found 214 individuals who claimed that they owned cats but no other pet (Cat group), while 214 individuals who did not own a pet were matched with the Cat group by gender, body mass index (BMI), and age (no cat (NC) group)
Somewhat tangential question, but what algorithm would you use in order to pick the control group here? And what if instead I wanted to build the largest control group that still matched the features of my test group?
The gut microbiota seems to have a major influence in the body in which they reside.
Cat + human is only one of the examples of this symbiosis. The same can be said for any animal + human.
Human + human is also true. A couple will tend to resemble each other in looks when living together for a while. If you think about it, the skin is just the outer layer of the gut. One can think of the body as a tubular structure with a couple of openings. The inside, includes the gut where most of the microbiota reside, but also on the skin, in the hair, in the mouth, etc. So when we kiss or touch, we are exchanging microbiota.
Animals in this regard form a sort of proxy. They facilitate the transfer of the microbiota from human to human, including animal to human and human to animal. Overall it seems that diversity is preferable. That's one of the reasons that it's not good to be alone for too long as the microbiota diversity gets compromised. So getting a pet does actually work, be it a cat or dog.
If you keep your cat indoors its entire life, that's not an issue to my understanding.
There is a comical conspiracy theory that people only love cats because they have a brain parasite. I mostly hear it from people who think cats can't be sweet.
Sure, if you aren't ready for the cat taking guardianship role - my nephew grew up with the cat taking position beside him in his crib from the very first days he was brought home from the hospital.
My dogs did this when my sister was born, at least until she was moving around on her own. Whenever you put her down to change her, they'd lay a few feet away (one on each side) and growl if anyone they weren't sure of tried to get too close. I don't recall them ever growling at anything else, and were fine with visitors at any other time, so it really stood out.
> [...] Therefore, cat ownership may be involved in mediating the abundance of disease-related gut microbes.
> [...] Therefore, from the perspective of gut microbiota, our study not only supports that there might be no correlation between cat ownership and obesity but also clarifies that cat ownership can affect the structure and function of gut microbiota in NW [normal weight] individuals.
Including all of this next paragraph as it all seems good...
> Functional predictions indicated that cat ownership would lead to increased synthesis of B vitamins, amino acids and carbohydrate metabolism. Moreover, SCFA-related pathways (4-hydroxyphenylacetate degradation, TCA cycle VII (acetate producers), and glycerol degradation to butanol) were significantly increased. As the biosynthetic precursor of cofactors, vitamins play a vital role in organisms. The gut microbiota can provide various vitamins for the host [41]. Increasing glucose metabolism in the gut microbiota may be beneficial to host blood glucose control [42]. SCFAs can participate in intestinal epithelial energy supply, affect the intestinal environment (such as pH and electrolyte balance), and regulate host material and energy metabolism. SCFAs are related to the occurrence of various energy metabolism diseases. SCFAs have anti-inflammatory effects. Therefore, the influence of cat ownership on gut microbiota function may affect the health of the owner.