Warning: Zombie cats terrorize Hawaii!

First meth and now this!

The zombie craze was such a dang thing two-ish years ago, wasn’t it though. From television shows like The Walking Dead to books like Guide to The Zombie Survival Guide to the dead-in-the-not-so-distant-future-of-some-flesh-eating-disease chic that made its way down Parisian runways zombies were totally everywhere.

Of course I don’t believe in zombies in real life but the wonderful Hawaiian islands are beginning to challenge my prejudices. The chain, as you know, has many methamphetamine enthusiasts and while not officially “zombies” they sure do act the part. And now Hawaii is home to cats carrying some brain eating protozoan (called “toxo”) that essentially zombifies them. Let us read a snippet from Outside magazine:

There was something else about toxo that made it especially creepy, in a Walking Dead kind of way. For starters, the perpetrating protozoa, T. gondii, can sexually reproduce only in the gut of a felid, a member of the cat family. An infected felid excretes the protozoa in the form of microscopic oocysts, and a single felid can poop out hundreds of millions of oocysts, although only one is needed to infect another animal. If a rat then consumes an oocyst, the protozoa can take over the rat’s brain and make it lose all fear of cats. Studies report toxo-infected rats cavorting in cat urine. Cats consume such rats easily, enabling T. gondii to replicate again.

While not having fear and cavorting in cat urine may seem like a wonderful vacation it is very dangerous I think. In short, the disease spreads to all sorts of seals, pigs, dogs, birds etc. mostly from these wild zombie cats. A bill was introduced in the state legislature to outlaw the feeding of feral cats, thus culling the population but cat people got all crazy and killed it in committee and now there is a war between cat people and non-cat people and the zombie cats are going nuts everywhere.

Very strange times and do the zombie cats make you re-think your next Hawaiian vacation? If the World Surf League does not, in fact, secure a permit for the 2019 season do you imagine the zombie cats could pull off the Pipeline Masters? Who would they invite to participate?