CRAZY CAT LADY explained

Feral cats have recently been a huge thereat to the native wildlife across Australia. They are dreaded to bring about the complete eradication of certain species of animals. Besides being a big danger to the Australian marsupials, it also threatens the farm animals-sheep and cattle alike. Australian govt. has put the plans in place to completely eradicate these cats over next 10 years from certain Islands (Tasmania, Christmas Islands, Kangaroo Islands etc.) where they have become a growing, ever increasing menace.

Parasite carried by feral cat

Besides acting as direct predators, they also kill animals by spreading an infection and a disease called Toxoplasmosis. They carry a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii.

The Toxoplasma parasite needs to pass through two different animal hosts to complete its life cycle. Some stages of the life cycle can occur in any warm-blooded animal (the intermediate host), but the sexual stages can only occur in a cat (the definitive host).

If the animal is healthy, the immune system usually produces antibodies that keep the parasite under control. The parasite then goes into a relatively dormant state, forming invisibly tiny cysts mainly in the heart, lungs, brain, eyes, and spinal cord. While the cysts stay with the animal for life, they rarely cause any direct harm. But for some animals, infection can be deadly. If an animal’s immune system isn’t quite up to the task, either through illness or stress, the initial infection can lead to toxoplasmosis. The disease has a range of debilitating symptoms, including anorexia, lethargy, reduced coordination, apparent blindness, enlarged lymph nodes, disorientation, breathing difficulties, jaundice, fever, abortion, and death. Some of these side-effects may kill the host directly, while for others, they will make the host an easier target for predators.

Why do we need to completely eradicate the feral cats

Newly infected cats only shed the parasite for around two weeks. However, in that short time, a single cat can shed more than 20 million parasites in their faeces. Thousands of mammals and birds can then become infected, by eating food, soil or water contaminated by a single cat. Under cool, humid conditions, these parasites can survive in the environment for at least 18 months, continuing to kill wildlife long after the cat has left the area. Also, A recent study found that 84% of feral and stray cats tested in Tasmania were infected with the parasite. So, guys, better keep your kids from playing with the stray cats. From today itself, I am going to stop feeding cheese to the stray cat that comes to say good morning to me everyday.

Fascinating way in which the parasite manipulates the rat brain

Once this parasite infects a rat/mouse, it travels through the blood stream and lodges itself in a certain specific areas of brain, where these parasites form cysts. Now these cysts manipulate the behaviour of rats in such a way that they become less fearful of cats. And that is what the parasite wants. To complete the sexual stages of it’s life cycle, which can be accomplished only in cats, it wants the rat to be eaten up by cat. Now isn’t this fascinating? I mean, a dreadful end result, but a fascinating mechanism.

Threat to marsupials

Native species like eastern barred bandicoot, Tammar wallabies, koalas, wombats, small dasyurids, Bennett’s wallabies and pademelons are under big threat from this parasite, with infected animals found dead or stumbling around blindly during the day, vulnerable to predators or cars as they stumble onto busy roads.

Crazy cat lady theory ;)

The humans that are infected with this parasite show an altered behaviour and personality, accompanied by reduced psychomotor performance (Jaroslav Flegr, 2007).

If the source of infection is directly the cat, you must remember that the parasite is more likely to propagate if there are two or more cats in close vicinity to one another, as that would make the infection to keep on going back and forth between the cats. Otherwise, as mentioned earlier in this blog, the newly infected cat can spread infection for only two weeks. A possible explanation of the 'criteria' for qualifying as Crazy Cat Lady, as 'to have more than at least two cats'! ;)

Humans can get the infection through any of these several routes:

-eating undercooked meat of animals harbouring tissue cysts 

-blood transfusion or organ transplantation

-transplacentally from mother to foetus

-consuming food or water contaminated with cat faeces or by contaminated environmental samples (such as faecal-contaminated soil or changing the litter box of a pet cat)

Personally, I think that after coming in contact with this information, I wouldn’t risk my already flimsy mental state, or add to my frequent inexplicable behaviour by having a cat as a pet. In fact, I have always been biased towards a dog as a better choice for pet- especially if it’s a  Doberman!! But for those of you who love cats, remember to take required precautions, about changing the litter in time and using disposable gloves while doing that, and also if possible, demarcating the cat-zone, and cat-free zone in your house. For the people with an undying love for cats, here's a gift from me.... 

Good luck with this starter kit, enjoy ;D....

Kitchen shelf medicine cabinet- for Allergies and Hay Fever

Saturday is (most of the times) a day off from my kitchen duties. Rahul, my better half, made us a very scrumptious dinner. But as we were having our afternoon tea, a little before dinnertime, another egg allergy hit him. Poor him, he just had to go to the bed without eating anything.

We had just tea and some peanuts. I went over the process of making the tea over and again in my head, but could not figure out where the allergy came from. Little one did have egg in his breakfast….but all the usual precautions were taken- the egg utensils were washed in a separate sink (immediately), Pumpkin (my 18mo old) was given a thorough wash, his eating table was rigorously scrubbed and cleaned…but still some micro particles managed to escape and made their way into our tea. And well, Rahul is highly sensitive to even trace amounts of egg.

Earlier, in the event of an egg allergy, the first thing that he would do would be to run to the medicine cabinet and grab some anti-allergens. As is the case with any other medicine, this would have its own set of side effects, to which Rahul has recently become intolerant –psychologically rather than physiologically!

And that pushed me to sort of explore the alternative natural cures to alleviate his   symptoms in the situations like these. I thought that sharing this stuff might help some people out there as well.

So, here are some recipes for the allergies including hay fever. This is definitely not an alternative to the regular medicine, if your allergies are really sever, but you can still try these things to alleviate the symptoms of allergy, or maybe help you bring down the dose of your medication:

1. Honey is said to cure hay fever because the bee pollen in honey can desensitise your body to other pollens. Increasing honey in your daily dietary intake should reduce hay fever symptoms significantly.

2. Vitamin C is a known natural antihistamine and is be found in citrus fruits like oranges, lemons and grapefruit.

3. You will love this one! Red peppers and chilli peppers contain an active component called capsaicin. When eaten, this component opens nasal passages and helps reduce congestion brought on by hay fever, alleviating symptoms significantly.

(So, going to an Indian Restaurant for some really hot and spicy food could prove good for you! ;))

4. Carotenoids They are the naturally occurring pigments in plants, which act as powerful antioxidants to help reduce inflammation in your airways and improve your immune system. A good source of carotenoids can be found in foods such as

carrots, apricots, pumpkin, sweet potato and spinach.

5.  And this is one of my favorites, I take it after a hard day’s work, the Chamomile tea. It is usually promoted as a tea that calms you down. But it is also contains antioxidants and antihistamines, called flavonoids and these act effectively as an anti-inflammatory agents. Chamomile tea can also be used as an eye compress. The compress provides a cooling effect to the swollen, red eyes caused by hay fever/allergies and reduces irritability considerably.

6. Garlic Increasing your dietary intake of garlic can help boost your body’s immune system, while also acting as a decongestant and helping to alleviate minor hay fever symptoms. It’s also an anti-inflammatory and a good source of quercetin, a natural antihistamine.

7. Ginger Ginger acts as anti-histamine and aids in the treatment of allergies. In addition, the research has shown that ginger has antioxidant, anti-viral, anti-inflammation, and anti-tumor effects, as well. So, this is a good one to have in your normal diet, even when you don’t have any allergies. I use a lot of ginger in my cuisines- love the flavour too!

8. Onions Onionskins contain a natural antihistamine and anti-inflammatory proven to reduce symptoms in hay fever sufferers. It is best if you could chew on raw ones (but make sure that you stay indoors afterwards- not go out torture other people ;P).

Besides these things from your kitchen, a few other things that you can try your hands on are:

• ·      Chinese medicine of acupuncture can reduce hay fever symptoms, such as a runny nose and itchy eyes, dramatically.
• ·      You can use self-hypnosis or some sort of self-relaxation technique. It is known to bring about a dramatic reduction in the hay fever symptoms, such as a runny nose and irritated throat.
• ·      And spreading a thin layer of Vaseline inside the lower nostrils can help combat hay fever and reduce symptoms significantly. The Vaseline traps pollen entering the nostrils, effectively blocking it from entering the nasal passages and stopping hay fever symptoms from worsening.

I gave Rahul some freshly ground ginger (about 1 inch piece) mixed with two tea spoons of honey before he went to sleep. Let’s see how he feels in the morning….

The art and science of “Mood Jewelry”

Today, as I was organizing the drawers of my dresser, I came upon this piece of jewelry that I had bought a few months ago.  It’s a beautiful pendant with two multicolored dragons in Yin and Yang symbol. Now, the special thing about this piece of jewelry is that it is a “mood jewelry”! If you feel like an ignorant at this stage, please don’t, because my reaction was also the same – “What? I am sure that they could have come up with some less stupid way to market their product!” But folks, not only does it exist, but it has been around for quite sometime now, as most of you might already know (I know that most of the people don’t live in the kind of ignorance that I do ☺). And while I held this piece of jewelry in my hand and gave a serious thought to buy it, the scientist in me kept on mocking at me and reminding me that this was something that the scientists don’t do… they don’t let a piece of jewelry control them, or read them, for that matter. Although, buying it did seem like a stupid idea, but the concept was not only interesting but intriguing as well, so I just went along with it and bought it…..out of curiosity. Well, the pendant was beautiful as well, but that was secondary ☺.

When I first wore it, which was the very next day, the colours of the pendant kept changing all the time. But the thing is, for the whole day that day, every time it changed it’s colour, I would rush to have a look at the colour chart that came with this jewelry.  The colour chart had meanings for all the colours that the pendant would possibly change to, while you were wearing it. Now don’t laugh at me at this, but, at the end of the day, I became so dependent on this mood pendent (literally ☺), that I found myself quite handicapped in knowing how I felt, unless I saw the colour change and read the colour decoding mood chart (lol..). I consulted that chart so many times that by now, I know the meanings to all the colours by heart. A few main ones are:

•            Blue is being in a relaxed state

•            Green is for being in a somewhat relaxed

•            Purple is for feeling love

•            Black is when you are anxious…. and you know what, it did turn black when for a moment, when I thought that I might have lost the color de-coding chart, and panicked that I won’t be able to know how I feel anymore. Haha….ok ok…no more exxageration!!

The science behind the mood jewelry

This mood jewelry actually changes colour according to the wearer's skin temperature and because people's emotional state is often accompanied by temperature changes, this gives an indication of mood. It is made from a crystal called-  “thermochromic liquid crystal”.

It is a unique type of crystal with the properties that are in between those of a liquid and a crystal. They may be able to flow like a liquid but their molecules show a rigid structure.

And you know, your LCD screens are made from the same thing, since some of these crystals show colour change when electric current is passed through them.  LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Displays.

These Liquid crystals can also be used as plastic thermometers like visual indicators of the temperature of refrigerators and tropical fish tanks.

And, last but not the least, in certain cases, they can even help control panic attacks by being used as biofeedback devices. So, because of the colour change in the piece of jewelry that the person is wearing, patient gets an in-time warning and then the meditation can be used to try to prevent the panic attack or to reduce its effects. Isn’t that amazing- something very valuable? Like I did the other day…when the colour of my pendant turned black, indicating that I was anxious, I sat down and ate chocolates and kept eating them, all focussed, till the colour turned to “less stressed” one (lol…).

And, I just thought up of another use for it. If you are not sure how your girlfriend/boyfriend feels about you, gift them this jewelry and wait for it to turn purple. Right?

If you are curious, love colours, ‘anxious’ sometime, fun loving; or either one of these, I would say that this “mood jewellery” is a must have! 

Getting past the emotional block of blogging

I had been planning to have a blog since a long time. In fact I almost had one, some two years ago. But being a private, bottled up person that I am, I was overly concerned with the privacy settings. I didn’t want my thoughts or writings to be pried upon. I thought that they were very personal, precious, and hush hush. But in reality, when I was thinking of all these things, I failed to realize that I was thinking about sharing my emotions, not my thoughts and ideas. Maybe that came from my habit of writing a diary only/mostly about such things. I would journal only when I would either be too happy about something and I wanted to record it, or too upset/stuck in a situation where, writing it down offered me either consolation or would help me put the pieces of the puzzle together and enabled me to find a solution to my problem/situation. So, I would spend less time in writing and more in worrying about people that would get their hands on my writing.

But, I can not only not live without writing, thinking, creating, but also, not without sharing and connecting, because at the heart of hearts I am a people’s person. So, I decided to have a blog…a blog in which I would share just information, a detached discussion of a subject. I started another Blog! Although, the article I was writing would have been of value to a lot of people, but that calculated emotional detachment, took all the passion out of it. And one sad thing about the creative and sentimental people is that, if they are not passionate, they are capable of doing a sloppy job in something even ridiculously simple. So, I had the word document of my first post to this blog, sitting in its infancy for a long long time. All the researched material was there, it just needed to be put in order and to be given a few finishing touches. But that never happened either. I didn’t have any motivation. Why? Because, I had been trying very hard to keep myself out of the equation.

Well, with age and experience, I have become sort of a more open person. So, I thought of starting a blog, where, besides sharing the information, I would also let myself loose, let me do a little dance around, get out there and connect with people. Actually, looking back at my life, I had so many embarrassing moments in my life, that another one wouldn’t harm my reputation all that much :). And if worst comes to worst, I can always delete the post in order to check the further damage.

So, here I am guys….all ready to share, tell, discuss, argue (if needed ;)). Please be supportive and encouraging when I do a bad job, and a little tolerant when worse.

Time taken in writing this blog: 20 mins

Satisfaction level: Very low (but posting it anyways:))