Non-human animals are, if we’re being honest, extremely gross. The fact that we keep them in our homes is a testament to our loneliness and neediness as a species. As my dog runs in her sleep beside me, I try desperately not to think about the fact that her paws - which are now on my bed - routinely trod in read: pee-soaked grass.
Frontline and doggie dry shampoo and a battery of vaccines have made her existence in my life just a little less fetid. She (most likely) is not a carrier of any serious diseases. The only thing I need to worry about when she climbs on top of me is that her large, heavy head might collide with my jaw.
That was not always the case. From plague-ridden fleas to worm-filled turds, the animals we keep around us have historically operated a cute, precious, adorable ferry system for various contaminents.
Some of the things they carried would make you sick. Some would make you so sick that you died. And some, often without the knowledge of the new host, would make you sick in the head.
Cats
Humans and animals have been living ass-to-elbow since the dawn of time and, as a result, we’ve gotten pretty OK at it. Domestication has been a mutually-beneficial arrangement for animals of the pet variety, like cats and dogs and small rodents and reptiles and birds and the like. We provide some semblance of shelter, food, and, often, medical care, while they provide…um…cuteness?
However, before humans figured out how to flush worms from a dog’s gut or repel fleas from a cat’s coat, these critters brought their own critters into the relationship. And those unwelcome guests tended to bring their own party favors.
If you know even a single thing about “cat scratch fever” (other than the song) you probably know that it comes from cats walking in their own poop and then giving a human a little poop-tattoo with their claws. And that’s more than a lot of people knew 70 years ago!
The first documented incidence of cat scratch disease (CSD), which is caused by an organism called Bartonella henselae, was in 1931 - though at the time, doctors weren’t exactly sure of the source. Prior to that, numerous cases had been described with similar symptoms, including swollen lymph nodes, fever, and swelling, but had never been tied back to a cat scratch. That connection took another two decades. From an article in Infections Diseases:
The first formal description of CSD was made in Paris and was named “maladie des griffes du chat” in 1950 to acknowledge the link between the disease and cats.
Which means that for **centuries**, people were getting diseased by their newly-domesticated cats and getting very sick and possibly even dying and never putting it together. Fortunately, most cases aren’t that serious - except for the ones that are.
Other ailments have also been linked to cats, specifically, toxoplasmosis, a bacterial disease caused by Toxoplasma gondii. T. gondii doesn’t impact everyone - in fact, many people have it but don’t have symptoms at all - but the people it does impact definitely showed it. In fact, some research papers have theorized that a large amount of mental illness might potentially be tied to latent toxoplasmosis.
CSD has also been linked to schizophrenia and cat bites in children are linked to other delusional disorders later in life. And it’s pretty unlikely that this is new; it seems like folks have always had an idea (even if doctors didn’t draw the connection) that cats and their associates could potentially make a person unwell, both emotionally and physically.
Rats
Bubonic plague, too, was blamed largely on cats - even though it was the rats that hung out in their fur that really spread it - because there was so much superstition and suspicion around roaming felines.
From the National Library of Medicine:
The connection began during the Middle Ages when people became sick and died without understanding the scientific truths of their illnesses. These occurrences often had people looking for something or someone (maybe witches?) to blame for their sicknesses… Some believed that the devil sent black cats to assist witches with their evil deeds and practice of magic, and that witches could shape-shift into cat-form so they could slink around in the shadows casting spells on unsuspecting people.
Here we have the origin story of so many of our oldest creepy tropes. Witches were crazy ladies who brewed ale and thus kept cats around to keep the mice out of the grain. They may have had unusual features due to the swelling from toe
The fear of cats spreading disease predated the actual diagnosis of a connection - but people knew. Or they thought they knew. Because of course, it wasn’t really the cats as much as it was their blood-sucking friends.
Still, the ill will around cats - mostly black cats - persists and these sweet tiny panthers still have a harder time getting adopted than their more colorful counterparts.
And Also Bats
Because fauna represent an ecosystem - kind of like a pyramid scheme where the pyramid is made up of animals - all kinds of other creatures make up this large-scale spread of disease. That includes bats.
Bats, which are very fun to watch and also pretty adorable, if we’re honest, are also potential vectors for a whole load of diseases. The journal Nature stated back in 2020 that “over the past 50 years, several viruses, including Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Nipah virus, Hendra virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), Middle East respiratory coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and SARS-CoV-2, have been linked back to various bat species.”
Yikes, bats. YIKES.
Is this the etymology of “bat-shit crazy” then? Since some of these diseases can definitely make you a little loopy in the head?
Not quite.
The main disease caused by bat turds - guano, I can hear you telling me, because you’re so excited to finally get to use that word - is histoplasmosis, which is actually a fungal infection. You get it from breathing in the spores that are in guano (or bird droppings). But histoplasmosis doesn’t come with psychiatric symptoms. So what’s the deal?
It seems more likely that the idea of being “bat-shit crazy” isn’t actually an issue of the shit, but of the bat - or, more specifically, the bat bite, which can transit rabies. But so can a cat bite! Or a dog bite! So you may be just as well served to say someone is “cat-shit mad.” Actually, that’s probably more accurate.
Rabies, Baby
Rabies, which is not a poop disease, is probably one of the top illnesses that historically has made people go full-on batty.
Dr. Jessica Wang, who wrote an entire book about rabies and how it was low-key behind a whole lot of moral panic, succinctly summarized the role of rabies:
Centuries ago, the loss of bodily control and rationality triggered by rabies seemed like an assault on victims’ basic humanity. From a real dreaded disease transmitted by animals emerged spine-tingling visions of supernatural forces that transferred malevolent animals’ powers and turned people into monsters…
Nineteenth-century American accounts never invoked the supernatural directly. But descriptions of symptoms indicated unspoken assumptions about how the disease transmitted the biting animal’s essence to the suffering human.
Sometimes the disease left eerie traces. When a Brooklynite died from rabies in 1886, the New York Herald recorded a freakish occurence: Within minutes after the man’s last breath, “the bluish ring on his hand – the mark of the Newfoundland’s fatal bite…disappeared.” Only death broke the mad dog’s pernicious hold.
Today, rabies is easy to prevent (though it’s still nearly impossible to treat once symptoms have appeared) and most dogs and cats are vaccinated, reducing the risk of disease we bring into our homes when we adopt a new best friend.
But it is interesting to think about how many of our superstitions and spooky ideas or tropes have roots in literal diseases - and the transition of those diseases by our beloved companions.
I hope you enjoyed Spooky Season this year! We’ll be back to regular mental health stuff in the next couple of weeks.
And in the meantime, please support the people of Palestine.