Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Cats

Episode Date: September 10, 2015

This week on Sawbones, it's Part Two of our series of putting pet-centric illness on BLAST. This week, live from Vancouver, we give kitties the business. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Hey everybody. Um, I'm Riley in case you didn't know. Um, or maybe you didn't know. Maybe you didn't know. Maybe you didn't know. Or maybe you didn't know. Maybe you didn't know. Maybe you didn't know. Maybe you didn't know. Or maybe you didn't know.

Maybe you didn't know. or maybe you didn't know. Or maybe you didn't So since Sydney and Justin forgot, they decided they would give me the present of coming on stage and talking to a bunch of people I didn't know without preparing, so there was a bad present. Anyways, enjoy Savons! Can you just have fun for now and not try to diagnose your mystery foil? We think you're ever just sit back, relax, and enjoy your moment of distraction from them. Bet, we're your own, your work. Hello everyone and welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tour of Miss Guided Medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McRoy.

And I'm Sydney McRoy. Do you have a message board where you plan this? Like it happens every time. It's nice you got some applause this time. That was good. I'm glad you saw me. I'm glad you were really far apart. Yeah, can we scoot go?

We usually, when we, when we podcast at home, we're like close. Yeah, and there's usually a baby like here, propped up like this. Right here. We're going, shh, no, no, just a few more seconds. Mommy and dad here making magic. Wow, what a thrill it is to be here in the home of Dragonstone, Canada.

I know this is silly. I didn't tell you. I put Kevin and Lear in number, Hersheveck and Arlene Dixon and Jim Chreliving on the guest list. I put him on the VIP, try to give him a tweet like, hey guys if you can make it out that'd be great. I can't believe they didn't are you guys? They made a minute. No, I can't believe they didn't come. guys they made it now No, they didn't come. It's our favorite show when Sydney was pregnant with Charlie. We literally watched Every one of them I know like stream them on the computer. They don't download them on YouTube Somebody out there is a hero because they've put every episode on YouTube

Yeah, and they make little changes. They don't know why, but they did it. And they make little changes, so they don't get caught by copyright protection. One was actually at a 35 degree angle. So we spent the entire episode like this. We watched it anyway. We watched it every frame. But my favorite one is the one where the guy makes a cat TV.

It's a TV channel for cats. Right. Yeah, specifically for cats to watch, like to entertain your cats. Which, do you remember what, like, what was on Cat TV? What do you... Uh... Just Garfield, pretty much. No, I don't remember what was on Cat TV, but I do remember he did not receive an investment.

It's surprising everyone. No takers. But you know Justin, it's funny you should mention cats. Is it? Yeah. Because the thing about cats, other than that, I mean they're great, we love them, we have a couple of cats that we miss, we miss them, I guess. They're fine. That's what we like our cats.

We take care of our cats. It's just then we had a baby and the cats kind of No, that's not true. We're very nice to our cats But they claw something poop. I don't know if you guys have cats. Um, anyway, they poop they poop all the time What about cats, but they also carried disease and maybe we should talk about that. Oh, that seems like a good fit for our program I'm a little tour of misguided medicine. We are doing a theme tour for the Pacific Northwest. We're finally, after all these years, putting pets on blast. Woo!

And can I just say too? I was really, I was so excited. I've never been to Canada at all before. Yeah. And as soon as we crossed the border, I felt like I could just like smell the universal healthcare and it was such a good smell. It felt so good.

I just, I wish I could carry it home with me. And by the way speaking again, I know there's a stereotype about you guys being nice and everybody has been nice. The first, like, nice, like just like super nice. But the first lady I interacted with the hospital, I thought everybody was gonna be like, No, that hotel, not the hospital. It was like, no, hotel, hotel.

She was like self-flagilatingly nice. It was like every, after every request, she would cut me off with a yes, absolutely, before I could even fit it. It was like, it was as if I was checking out a hotel room from Doppie. It was horrifying. I was worried that would be the par, but everybody's just been regular nice, so thank you.

Katz. Let's talk about Katz. People like to keep cats as pets, and that's not a new thing. We have kept cats as pets for probably like 12,000 years for a really long time. And the way we know that is that we found people who were buried with their cats. That's how much they love them. They would keep them with them and bury them with them. We know that the Egyptians were all about cats. I think most people like have that idea.

They had the goddess bestet who had the head of a cat and they worship cats and they like cats. They would actually even mummify cats, which I didn't know that. It was not uncommon to mummify your pets, but they found like whole cemeteries full of mummified cats, like lots of mummified cats. It's so weird the time it worked out that the pets

died exactly when the fairies died. LAUGHTER Don't break his heart. Just let him live in his lie. I was reading this essay about cat mummies because I read that sentence and I thought that can't be right. And we mummified cats.

And so I was reading more, like, people write a lot about cat mummies because I read that sentence and I thought that can't be right. And we mummified cats. And so I was reading more at like people write a lot about cat mummies. And there was this note like it's really sad. We don't have a lot of the cat mummies. They've been lost to antiquity, to people like stealing them. That's a big problem. Yeah, 100%. If I come across a cat mummy, it's not going to a museum. It's going to a den.

There was a note that at one point they discovered it was at the end of the 19th century, they discovered this huge cemetery with 180,000 cat mummies and they shipped them all back to Britain and turned them into fertilizer and then saved them. What? Which I don't know why that's your first thought. Look at, they're crazy. Look at all these cat mommies. These make great fertilizer.

They're gonna take them overseas to go do that. Yeah, how bad is your... How much do you need fertilizer? We're like, it's Gerald. Listen, you got... Listen though, really. Right, listen. Right, listen., you got to listen. Listen though, really, right, listen, right, listen. Do you got any cat mommies?

Things are bad here, all right? We probably started keeping cats as pets for a very practical reason, as we started growing things and we had like grain stores and things to protect from rodents. Cats were very practical because you would have a cat and things to protect from rodents. Cats were very practical because you would have a cat and it would kill the rodents and you pet them and curl up on your lap. So they're fun too. And so for a long time, cats were like a good thing. You would have a cat and it was your friend and everybody like cats. Except for in the middle ages, when we talk about this a lot, things always got weird with everything.

Yeah, everything sucks in the middle ages. And that was true about cats. For whatever reason, they became associated with the devil and with witchcraft. And generally, if something bad happened to somebody, and there was a cat in the vicinity, everybody blamed it on the cat. If you were a woman and you owned a cat,

that was evidence that you were a witch. That was enough. That's all it took. It's a low bar. Yeah. In general, nobody liked cats very much because of this whatever, this weird connection to evil things.

And this actually may have contributed to the spread of the plague a little bit, because they would kill cats, wipe out, just not have cats. Nobody took care of them. And so it let the rodent and the rat population flourish. So they got us back. Yeah. That does sound like cats.

Not that you say it. There's a weird cat myth. Have you ever heard that a cattle steal a baby's breath? I mean, anybody ever heard this? OK. This is but I like I never thought like, oh I've got to get to the bottom of that. But this is what I do. Like why do we think that? There are a couple thoughts because that's not a thing. There's never been any evidence. Imagine my relief. It's funny because it

was noted several times. There's never been any evidence that cats maliciously intend to murder anybody. They don't set out to murder someone. I guess one of our cats is huge. And so there was a time period where her lane on Charlie would have probably been a bad situation. So we wouldn't let that happen. It's bad when she lies on the stairs. She's a real tripping hazard. But there was never any evidence that

they were like going after babies. But they probably thought that for a couple reasons. One theory was that babies breast smell like milk, so maybe the cat wants to like sniff near their mouth, and so you see that and think, ah, I don't know why that's your first thought. Oh, they're stealing the baby's breath. Because you're like an old Tommy idiot. You didn't know? There was a thought that maybe it was that you could observe that cats get a little jealous when there's a new baby,

which I think that's a little true. So that was like the motive. Now we have a motive. Now we know why. They did it. And there were also these weird stories, like this news story from 1791, where the coroner had declared that an 18-month-old had been killed by a cat sucking out

its breath. And this would be in the paper periodically, which how horrifying would that be if that was today? If you have a cat and you have a baby, and then you read that, and you're like, what? Who? Why? That would be a bad corner though, really. Yeah, that was not a very good corner.

I think that's your problem right there. If the corner has that in their report, they should probably lose their position. Now, we like cats a lot more now, but if you don't like cats very much, it may be because you're one of many people who suffer from cat allergies and there are a lot of people who don't like to be around cats because they are allergic to them. And I thought this was interesting. You're not just allergic to the fur and the dander, which I think a lot of people assume. There's also stuff in their saliva that you can be allergic to. Oh, really?

That's actually really common. There's a protein that we denote, Fel D1, and it's's in cat saliva and of course they lick themselves so then it's all over them and that's a really common allergy trigger. And what I think is interesting about that is that if you've ever heard of hypowallergent cats, that's what they, like it's a different protein. They still have that in their saliva but it's slightly different and so that's why they sold them like these cats won't give you allergies because this one protein is a little bit different.

And so you'll be fine. And they sold them anywhere from $4,000 to $28,000 for a cat that wouldn't make you sneeze. Not make me sneeze, it better made me breakfast. 28 Gs. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, they're not as hypowallogenic as build. They may not be the answer to all your problems. There were a lot of people who got them and said, like, no, no, no, I swear, my allergies are gone. But when they did head-to-head

studies in a lab, they really couldn't like blind test, they really couldn't replicate that. The proofs in the pudding folks catalogies are made up. So you heard it here first and probably last. No, no. But my advice would be don't pay $4,000 for a cat. In general, there are lots of cats who need homes that aren't $4,000. Get those.

Don't buy the $4,000. Don't buy a $4,000 cat. Now, unless it's swallowed $3,800. Then you can get it. That's a good deal, but that's a long-gift. You're playing a long game. But wait, so it's okay to pay $200 for a cat? For a cat that can swallow $3,000.

That's come along with what's in a blue moon. The medicines, the medicines, that ask you let my God before the mouth. The medicines that ask you let my God for the mouth. Now, a lot of people, when I think of cat diseases, what would you do often, think about cat diseases? You think about cat scratch fever, right? You've heard of that, or cat scratch disease, which if you're ever gonna look up on the internet,

things about cat scratch fever, just say cat scratch disease, or you're gonna spend a lot of time hearing about Ted Nugent. And not. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon. So cat scratch disease is actually, it's a bacteria, Bartonella, Hinsley, and it's a very small bacteria,

and it's very hard to grow. And so it took us a long time to fully understand what was causing cat scratch disease. We knew that there was something that happened when people were around cats and then they would get sick and they'd get like fevers and they'd feel really lousy and they'd get these swollen lymph nodes. It's like it's always right here. There's a place where you get a swollen lymph node in your arm, epitrically, or lymph node. And we knew it had something to do with cats, but it took us a long time to grow the bug. And it can do really scary

things that usually doesn't. It usually, it just goes away. It's actually not that big of a deal most of the time. You get sick, you get better, no big deal. We can give antibiotics, we don't have to. It's not a big deal. Now there are really serious consequences that can happen rarely.

But that's pretty much it. So you hear all this buzz about cash-catch fever and cash-catch disease. I hear that a lot. Like people are scared of that. But it's really probably not that big big a deal But as I was trying to read and find anything interesting about cash crash fever I did find a really great description of the song cash crash fever Now how specifically is this within the purfew of solbount? It's not, but it's

much funnier than anything I could have told you about cat scratch disease. So I want to share it with you. Okay, tell me about the song, Cat Scratch Fever. So this is a description of the song. I don't know who wrote this, but I love them. The song is about a man chronicling his long history of promiscuous sex and lamenting, or perhaps celebrating, his inability to control himself or the women he has sex with and vice versa. I think that's a wonderful description of the song, Castcratch Fever. Yeah, it's really all encompassing and thorough. Like you really get the whole thing.

There's this whole thing that he goes into is, like, what was he, what was his 10-new just singing about with cat scratch fever? What is cat scratch fever? What is he talking about? And there was this theory, I guess, for a while syphilis was called cat scratch fever. That was the flying term for syphilis. So the, okay, well, obviously he's singing about getting syphilis, which made him really mad. And he was like, I can't repeat it because wephilis, which made him really mad.

And he was like, I can't repeat it because we don't do profanity on this show. But it's not about us doing it. Gosh darn it. You guys. Where do you get off? Where's the scallions? How dare you?

I'm Theodore Nugent, and I say. I'm not going to say that. Now, a disease you probably don't always think about associated with cats, but you can get from cats is a ringworm. Do you know that? Yeah. So, cats can get ringworm and they can carry it around in their fur. Your dogs can too.

But we're talking about cats, so just don't think about that. And you can get ringworm from human to human or from cat to human. Now ringworm is not a worm. I think most people know that by now. No. Ringworm is not a worm. One might say 50% of the people on the stage don't know that. It's an unscientific pole, but I believe it's accurate.

People thought it kind of looked like a worm, because it's round and like it's this little red, round, flaky area on your skin and people thought, oh, it's a little worm under there. But it's not. And we actually, it's a fungus. And we knew it was fungus like 1850s. We've known this for a really long time.

So why do we, why we still call it ringworm? I don't know. I don't know. But we do. I believe the names are already there. And maybe it will take a while for the rest of those folks to realize that it's not a worm. Let me know when they do.

Okay. Well, yeah, we have meetings, so I'll keep you up. We used to think, so Ringworm was this area of huge study at the end of the 1800s and the early 1900s, especially in London, because it was infecting all these schools. It happened right after in 1870, they made school mandatory, and so everybody was going to school. It was just spreading a lot because there were all these kids playing together in a classroom together, and they're all dirty and rubbing up against each other or whatever, and so they all gave each other ringworm.

It was associated with stigmatized. If you had ringworm, then it was thought that you didn't clean yourself well enough, and your clothes weren't nice enough, and that you didn't eat enough vegetables. That was a big theory. Like, if you don't eat enough vegetables, you probably get ringworm. And you don't want to hang out with kids who don't eat vegetables.

Those are the coolest kids. 100%. Those are the James Dean of Kids. So the Board of Governors actually assigned these doctors and scientists to like look into the problem, come up with some solutions. Let's figure out what we can do to stop the scourge of ringworm. And one of the solutions that they came up with was that there was actually there were ringworm schools where you just sent all the kids who had ringworm. They're bad teaching assignments and then they're bad teaching assignments. That's the one you definitely, definitely, definitely do not want.

Then they were called that. Like there was the Downs Ring want. Then they were called that. There was the Downs Ringworm School, is what people called it. Where you got this call? They're not going to ring the whims. They're fighting tigers or something? Like a prestigious school for kids that don't touch other kids.

Like something. Mrs. Itchy School for Educational Advancement, something. Anything is better than ringworm school? Tag. Why you were at ringworm school? What do they, what professor asked us to call this school, the ringworm school for, gifted kids? Nobody would go.

Why you were at ringworm school, you wouldn't just learn things, you'd also get treated for your ringworm, which at the time was not necessarily pleasant. It would happen on the scalp a lot, and that was what was particularly hard to treat. If it happened on your skin, they would tell you just to put like some of your ink on it, just dump some of your pen ink, and that'll probably make it go away. And because of some of the chemicals

that it was made with at the time, it may have worked. What, I mean, do they, okay, wait, wait, wait, what? Why would they, okay, they're at ringworm school. Can they get like a medicine? Why do they have to like become ringworm guivers? Just like, okay, this is what you have around you. You have ink, you have erasers. After lunch, you'll have a rectangular pizza.

How do you use these things to fix your ring? Just give us some medicine dog. Things are already bad enough. They're having a bad week, please. Well, they did give a medicine, but you probably didn't want it because if you had it on your scalp, first up is to shave your head. Unfortunately, because the idea was that we've got to get rid of the hair somehow. So they would either shave your head or there was a certain rat poisoning that they would put on your head to make all your hair fall out. That was a very popular treatment.

And then they would just keep putting like different chemicals on your scalp to keep it anything from growing. So basically things that would blister your skin and make your head hurt all the time. But after a while, they got an even more advanced treatment. In about like 1904, they started doing X-rays to the head in just enough strength to make all your hair fall out.

That's a lot of X-raying. Like some of you have probably had an X-ray and did your hair fall out? No. I'm just trying to think about how sports went at brainworm school. I mean, they would be the champions, right? Like, every team would forfeit. Like, they would be undefeated every single season.

That's what Friday night lights was about. Clear eyes that you skin can't lose. So they actually x-rayed kids heads for Ringworm for a really long time. They were like decades where this was the treatment. And an x-ray in the beginning would have been like 40 minutes long where you just sit there and then your hair falls out and your scalp hurts for like six to eight weeks and then finally the hair grows back, but there's no more fungus. So, so the success rate was high,

but obviously it fell out of favor after a while because, you know, radiation and that's crazy and it's just ringworm. So you had a chance for back to regular school? Yeah, no, you went back to regular school. Do you know how confused you would be when all your classes weren't about ringworm? Excuse me, I understand the allegory of the cave, what I'm having trouble with is, how does this connect to ringworm?

You be like that old man in Shaw's Angredemption. You just want to go back to Ringworm School. I can't live on the outside. Now, I have limited time, but I want to tell you about one more, one more disease. Hit me. So, one question I get is, is there really something that cats have that can make you go crazy if you get it? Is there really some sort of have that can make you go crazy if you get it? Is there really some sort of really scary parasite that cats carry? And what people are asking me about is toxoplasmosis, which you may have heard it's the thing

that when you're pregnant, it's why you can't clean a litter box. Or it's the great excuse you have to never clean a litter box. Sorry. Yeah, I don't know how you've managed to keep that going since our daughter's 13 months old almost But you've kept your perfect streak going I'm not a little bit of a boss ever Talked about it just not me Talks about my Gandhi I it's a little proto-science. I'll show you how to do it sometime if you're curious I'm really good scoop and dumb. It's not

It's not that hard. that's good. I'm really good. It's scooping dumb, it's not that hard. That's okay, I trust you. Okay, yo, Elmo. You can handle it. Thank you. And they found this when they were dissecting something that was called a gundi. And I had to look up, what is a gundi?

Because I didn't know what it was. And don't look it up, because they were dissecting them. And this just made me sad. They're adorable little rodents. They're these little African rodents. They're kind of like little hamsters. But they African rodents. They're kind of little hamsters. But they carry toxoplasmosis and leash menisis. That's how they kind of found them by accident.

So stay away from them. But they're adorable. Let's stay away from them. But seriously, super cute. But they're adorable. You can also get it from other, we blame cats for this a lot, but you could get it from like uncooked meat.

That's actually more likely if somebody gets toxoplasmosis, that's where they get it. And it can form little cysts throughout your body, different places, and little parasites growing these little cysts, and you can get really sick from toxoplasmosis. Most people don't though. And the reason we know this is, okay,

so everybody looked to your left, and now looked to your right and Now ask those people if they have toxoplasmosis Because if they say no then you do What Statistically, it is likely that one third of the world's population carries toxoplasmosis sleep sleep tight of the world's population carries toxoplasmosis. Sleep tight. Sleep tight. They have found the cysts that they form like in people's hearts

and in their skeletal muscles just after they died of completely other things, not anything to do with toxoplasmosis. They're just very random. Tom and all the epiomis. You may be carrying it, you carrying someone likely, I might. Or maybe you. More likely, me.

Somebody who rode in the van with us today, on the way from Seattle is carrying this. If, if, if, if, if cleaning the litter box is a contributing factor, it's definitely 100% me. I am the typhoid Mary of T plasmosis at our home. The good news is the Asia zero. The good news is most people are going to, even if they carry it, they're never going to know. You're going to be okay. It's usually more of a problem if you have a compromised immune system, but for the most part, even if you have it, you're never going to know about it.

of a problem if you have a compromised immune system. But for the most part, even if you have it, you're never going to know about it. Rats that it infects, though, it can control rats when they get toxoplasmosis and make them sexually attracted to cat pee. And it's the way that it gets to the cat. So the rat is sexually attracted to cat pee, so it goes to where cats are.

And then the cat eats the rodent, and then the cat gets toxoplasmosis, which is where the toxoplasmosis wants to be, which is terrifying, because the parasite does that. You know I have to do another thing after this, right? Like, I can't spin my whole night just, like, gripping my head and sheer terror. Here's the good news. Just, you like half-cats, cats are great.

Own cats, just like wash your hands. It's fine. Take them to the vet, wash your hands. Everything will be cool. It sounds like too much work. Folks, that's our time. Thank you so much for coming out. Thanks. much for coming out. Thank you.

Thank you to the taxpayers for letting us use their song Medicines as the Inter-Anountra of our program. Thank you to Riley Smirl for introducing us. We really appreciate that. Thank you to the Chan Center for having us here. Everybody's been super cool and nice. Thanks to Vancouver and the for having us here. Everybody's been super cool and nice. Thanks to Vancouver and the whole country of Canada. So first time here in the land of dragons and canada.

Yeah, you should. This has been great. I remember so many times as a little girl watching the grassy and radio free Roscoe and thinking someday I'm going to go to Canada. And I'm just glad to be here. Looks like we made it. Listen, okay, I just gotta do it for us until the next time

we have something to talk about. My name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Thank you.