Cats and Health

Cats are strange creatures. We treasure them as pets, but, unlike dogs, cats are very aloof and mostly do as they please. It’s easy to annoy a cat and make it attack you, and cats often scratch and bite when they are angry. People have to be careful of cats, especially wild ones, as they may carry diseases. However, despite all of this, cats can actually be good for your health.

It turns out that a cat can be a great companion for someone who is feeling down or lonely. While a cat can’t make you feel positive thoughts, it can help distract you from negative thoughts. They alleviate negative thoughts and provide emotional support, and there’s even some evidence that having a cat can reduce blood pressure. Of course, not every cat will make you feel better, but they make for great pets and companions, almost as good as having a human companion.

What is even more interesting is when cats purr. Apparently the frequency of a cat’s purr is actually on the same frequency used to help mend bones. I say “apparently”, it’s not confirmed. But a cat purring can help alleviate a bad mood, in the same way that all other cat-based things do.

We also have the existence of therapy cats. The same way we have therapy dogs, therapy cats help relax patients and calm them down, and both the cat’s purring and petting the cat can reduce high levels of stress.

Sadly though, if you are allergic to cats, there’s not much you can do, and the allergy is pretty common, affecting three in every ten people in the US. Actually, I say that, it is possible for someone who is allergic to cats to slowly be able to tolerate a single cat that they live with. Over time, the reactions you get from your cat calm down and you stop being allergic to that one cat in particular. Every other cat though, one will still be allergic to them.

But if slow exposure doesn’t work, it’s not the end of the world. Even online, cats are good for you. The cat is basically the mascot of the internet, with hundreds and thousands, maybe even millions of cat videos, cat pictures and cat websites floating around. Heck, we also have cat celebrities, cats that are well known, across the internet and the real world. And, frankly, we’ve all seen funny cat videos on Youtube. There are so many of them, they’re unavoidable.

So yeah, at the end of the day, while an angry cat might claw at you, its mere existence can improve the mood of us humans. Just don’t try and hug any random cat you see. No matter how cute they are.

As a random aside, there’s actually a distinct breed of cat here in Cyprus, known as the Aphrodite’s Giant. Which helps explain why our cat Ringo was so big and muscular. Cyprus is also home to the oldest example of a pet cat, which was buried with a human around 9,500 years ago.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interaction_with_cats