Owning a cat could make you get into bondage, experts warn

Owning a cat may come with a strange, but very real, risk – you could find yourself fantasising about sado-masochism and other bizarre sexual practices.

It’s caused by a brain parasite which cat owners can pick up from their pets – and which has previously been shown to alter behaviour in mice and rats.

It might sound utterly bonkers, but it’s real – a common brain parasite from cats, toxoplasmosis, has been linked to sadomasochistic behaviour in humans, according to research in the journal Evolutionary Psychology.

Toxoplasmosis Gondii infects billions of people (about a third of the world’s population) and is often transmitted from pet cats – spread through contact with faeces.

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The parasite is found in the brain, as well as the muscles, and mouse and rat studies have shown that infection triggers changes in personality.

In rats, the parasite alters their behaviour so they become sexually attracted to the smell of cat urine – so they transmit the parasite to other cats (often dying in the process).

Using a questionnaire, researchers collected data from 36,564 people in Slovakia and the Czech Republic – 741 of whom were infected.

The researchers said that people with Toxoplasma, ‘expressed higher attraction to bondage, violence, zoophilia, fetishism, and, in men, also to masochism, and raping and being raped.’

Lead author Jaroslav Flegr said that the parasite, ‘succeeds in using the fact that sex-related stimuli and fear-related stimuli affect very similar circuits in the brain. Even without Toxoplasma, there will be some relationship between fear and sex.