November 21, 2025 • 24 mins
Tracy and Holly talk about the proclivity for destruction that was part of the balloon craze. They also discuss cat trees and how hard it is to find one that's cute.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about balloon riots this week.
Sure did an episode that was you know, one riot
(00:23):
was the request. I initially thought that it was going
to be about two riots, because the one that was
initially requested was one, and then the eighteen sixty four
one was the other one that immediately kind of showed
up in my preliminary research, and then I was like, oh,
there's a lot of them actually, and they all have
(00:45):
some striking similarities. And also it seems like everyone who
was opening a gardens somewhere that was either part of
the British Empire or had once been British territory, they
just all named them after gardens in London. Yeah, yeah,
same name, over and over. Yeah. It's that's one of
(01:06):
those interesting factors to me about early US history is
that there was so much we are our own new thing. Yeah,
but everything got named after something in Europe. Yeah yeah,
not everything, but a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah. It's
like people like to make fun of how weird. I mean,
(01:29):
not just in Massachusetts, but I feel like Massachusetts gets
a lot of it. How weird the pronunciation of town
names are compared to how they are spelled, and they're
all just pronounced roughly the same way as the same
spelled town in England. Is like, that's the reason, not
all of them, but a lot of the times that's
pretty much the case. I was, of course, reminded of
(01:51):
various sports related related riots that still happen. Yeah, when
a team wins something important or loses something important, although
a lot of times that is more like generic property destruction,
not chasing after the team that won or lost. To
(02:12):
set the ball on fire. Yeah, This whole like I'm
mad at the balloons, so we need to set it
on fire mentality is one that I just can't grasp. Yeah. Yeah,
one of the earliest things that we talked about about,
you know, the balloon launched, happening successfully, but then the
balloon which did not have a crew on it, kind
(02:33):
of coming down in a more rural area outside of Paris,
and then the local people attacking it. Like when I
saw that, I was like, this to me, does not
sound like necessarily a real thing that happened. It sounds
like It might more be a commentary about how whoever
was writing it thinks that rural people are dummies. But
(02:53):
the account saying that it was attacked with pitchport like,
that's pretty consistent. It shows up in several different places,
and I was like, maybe they really did attack the
thing that fell out of the sky. I don't know.
Humans are now in my head after this particular episode.
I know this intellectually. We have certainly studied the course
of human history enough to know, but you know that's
(03:14):
saying and I don't know if it's true that horses
are always a second away from madness. Sure, humans are
always a second away from violence. I feel like even
the most stayed human in the right circumstance will just
turn into a berserker and start stabbing things and setting
them on fire. I don't love that no everybody go
(03:38):
to therapy. I also think, like so often it really
seems like what like the initial run up to the
rioting was something involving a combination of boredom and disappointment.
And I'm sort of like imagining, like if if a
(03:59):
rain delay during a NASCAR race or a baseball game
or something suddenly caused the crowd to rush the field
and like break all the baseball bats or take baseball
bats to all the race cars. I don't know, right,
It's it's very weird. It it doesn't quite align with
(04:22):
I know, like I said, I know, there are still
things involving sport and spectacle that lead to some kind
of rioting or vandalism or whatever today. But it just
like the happening over and over and over in that
relatively short amount of time. It's just a little odd.
It is weird. I mean it's interesting too because ballooning
(04:43):
is in so many instances written about in this very
romantic kind of way. Right, the freedom of it, the
you know, sort of surreal experience of taking to the sky,
and then the flip of that culture is just people
being like, aw, let's kill it. I I don't know,
I don't know. There's an element of like how dare
(05:07):
you try to do something new and then not succeed
in it? Yeah, which I don't I'm not a fan
of obviously, Right. Well, and like we said in the episode,
it wasn't like they could go. It wasn't like it
could be secret. Like even if you had, say a
farmer had said yeah you can do this in my
(05:27):
field and the farmer lives somewhere with nobody around, maybe
you could get the balloon inflated without an audience being there.
But like then it's in the sky. People are going
to see it, right, It's going to be obvious, right,
and if you don't tell them it's going to happen,
they're going to think that we're being invaded by UFOs.
Possibly true. Yes, which is what inspired the Balloons of
(05:51):
World War two episode a couple of years back. Was
various weather balloons and spy balloons that were spotted and
raised alarm. Yeah. I mean there are lots of instances
of those kinds of things happening. Yeah, so you kind
of have to be public about it, yeah, because you
will terrify people. Yeah, raise reports of UFA there was
(06:16):
entertainment in the sky. That would be kind of amazing.
It would be I also can't help but think of
eggar all Impoe's balloon hoax. Oh yeah, that came up
in some of the research that I that was part
of this, and then I was like, that's a little
bit more of an aside than I want to include. Yeah. Yeah, which,
(06:38):
just in case anybody doesn't know he published a story
in the Sun in New York about claiming that someone
had crossed the Atlantic in a balloon in three days, right,
and people went wild. This was like, literally, it would
be the equivalent of somebody publishing an article tomorrow saying
I built a jet in my backyard and I flew
(07:01):
it to Mars. Yeah, and people would be like what
and that is what happened. And then he had to
retract it two days later and admit that it was
a hoax, and then nobody in them so funny. I
am still also just really stuck on, like thinking of
trying to have something that seems like a comparable phenomenon.
(07:25):
You know, there was like the whole Beatlemania phenomenon we
talked about Liz Domania on the show before, of people
just going absolutely out of their minds over Fran's list.
But like if it were today, if it were twenty
twenty five and people were going to like a Taylor
Swift concert and like the power went out, there was
(07:48):
no possible way to continue the show as normal. And
then what if the crowd just like rushed the cy
stage and destroyed all of the instruments and lighting. Yeah,
that would be wild and not really what I would
expect to happen currently in the world. I would totally expect, though,
people to knock over light poles and toilet paper houses
(08:11):
and stuff after sports winter loss. Anyway, it happens humans,
it does happen. Humans made for trouble apparently. Yeah, I
think we have exhausted all of the allotment of the
word balloon that could be said in an episode on
this one episode. That is a word that the more
you say it, it feels crazier and crazier, like your
(08:35):
brain goes this not a real word. There was one
sentence that I think you were you were saying it,
and I was like, why did I put the word
balloon so many times close together? Because that's what it's about, Bebby.
(09:00):
There's so much to talk about this week, because we
talked about pet inventions, and since you know, we both
have pets and many people in our listening audience do,
and we have experienced with lots of these products, plenty
(09:21):
to discuss. Also, a wild theory I have that has
absolutely no substance to it other than it occurred to me. OK,
But we'll talk about the other stuff first. One of
the things that came up a lot when I was
researching this in regard to Alan Simon. The last person
that we talked about who invented the we weie pad
(09:44):
was that in twenty nineteen, he put his very lavish
New York home on the market for forty million dollars. Wow.
And I looked at pictures and I understand and why
it was forty million dollars, even outside of it being
(10:05):
a prime location in New York that overlooks Central Park,
that was a lavishly decorated home. I understand that they
had to drop the price on it by about thirteen million.
That was the last thing I saw on it. So
presumably somebody bought it at like twenty seven million, but
(10:28):
I don't know for sure. But that's a lot of money.
But that was a very beautiful space, which I just
find interesting. He it also speaks to like how popular
pet products were. Yeah, and he was a very fascinating man.
Looking at videos with him, he's so interesting because he
(10:50):
talks like a guy from New York. He's very tan,
he is very straightforward. The obituary that I read of
him kind of hinted at how what a sweet man
he could be and how he was very dedicated to
his customers and you know, people with pets, but that
(11:11):
he also really loved business. And I'm like, was he
kind of like hardcore as a as a deal maker
but also was personally very sweet because that can certainly happen.
I just think he seems absolutely delightful. Yeah. Can we
talk about how ugly most cat trees are? Yo? We
(11:32):
sure can? That whole like can go with any decor.
It's elegant and beautiful, and I know there is a
big movement for like fansy cat trees. Yeah, but it's
also cat trees, by their nature are just hard to
be real cute you I don't know if you still
have but you don't know. Yeah, so you have one
(11:52):
that used to belong to me. That was a Christmas
present that was your standard poles wrapped in rope, covered
in carpet platforms. Cat tree, huge, real big. It's like
seven feet tall. It's a big one. It's a really
nice cat tree. So thank you because I still have
it and it's Marva's favorite place at night. Oh I
(12:15):
love it. Yeah, I'm like, how did I even get
that to my house? Like, I feel like it was
a Christmas gift for my parents, but then when I
moved to Massachusetts, there was going to be nowhere to
put it. Yeah, and like moving it to Massachusetts was
adding a whole additional thing to the expense of an
(12:38):
interstate move. And so now it's in my bedroom. Now
it belongs to Holly. I feel like I should also
tell you. I don't know if I ever told you this.
Uh huh. Our cat, Osle, who passed earlier this year,
up until he was eighteen, one of his favorite things
(13:00):
was to go to the very top of that cat
tree and then jump from it the roughly five feet
to our bed, okay, and just roll around like a
giggling cat, and wanted to be petty, and he would
do this over and over. It was his savor exercise
on her. Yeah. I also had been given that when
I had three cats, and when I was moving to Massachusetts,
(13:22):
I only had one cat who was in her elder
years and did not really use it. So anyway, when
we were ready to get more cats into our life
after we lost Cestina, I was looking for number one.
We had very specific space requirements, like where will a
(13:43):
cat tree fit? And then I didn't want something that
was just entirely covered in carpet for like allergen reasons,
and it took a lot to find something that would work.
And it is more attractive than a lot of cat
trees I feel are, But I also sort of felt like,
(14:07):
at least at that time, which this would have been
in twenty nineteen, it was the only one that existed
in the whole world. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing too,
is that there are, like I said, some very stylish
looking cat trees. In my experience having shopped for a
lot of them, they tend to be on the smaller side.
(14:27):
So if, like us, you have four cats, yeah, that's
not going to be enough. Yeah. The other thing is
that we similarly for a while, had all older cats,
so other than Ozl's dive bomb party, we didn't have
(14:50):
none of the other cats were really into the cat
tree situation. They were like, I'm gonna sit on the
couch or the bed because that seems easy to get
to and super cozy. But this year, as I have
mentioned before, we adopted three new cats who are all
about to turn seven because they're all from the same
litter and they need more yeah vertical party space. Yeah,
(15:18):
And so we ended up getting this huge monstrosity of
a cat tree that is in our kitchen, okay, because
they our kitchen is kind of I don't know how
well you remember it, but it's kind of a deepish space,
and there's a big tree that overlooks or a big
tree a big window that overlooks our deck at the
back of the kitchen. And so we were like, you
(15:39):
know what cats would love is a cat tree here,
and it may not be the cutest thing on earth,
but they will love it. Yeah, and they do. Like
that was a good call because it really helped with
transitioning them into our household and our other cats not
feeling like all their stuff got taken over because there
was a new thing. Right, But it's not cute. Buy
(16:00):
a cute or smaller, gothic y looking one that lives
in our living room, which is all Halloween all year round.
But they really prefer the kitchen, the ugly kitchen one, yeah,
because it's got a million places to go and it's
tall and they Jesse's big, but Donk doesn't fall out
of it, yeah, which is a very real, a very
(16:22):
real problem to solve in many spaces in our house.
Right Anyway, cat trees, and also big cat tries get
expensive in our they do. Yeah, yeah, I have sort
of I've I've I occasionally look around to see if
there is something specifically taller that would work somewhere in
(16:44):
our house for our cats. And it's one of those
things where I kind of idly poke around at it
and then go, no, I don't really see anything that
would work. But yeah, they can be really real pricey. Yeah. Okay,
(17:06):
are you ready for my possibly cokammy theory. Yeah, the
discussion the only reason if it stood out as any
to anybody as like that's a weird thing to include. Uh,
But the discussion of ed Low's fallout with his kids huh,
and the way they described his behavior. Yeah, and the
fact that he was kind of a crazy cat man,
(17:28):
by which I mean with love, like the way I
would call myself a crazy cat lady made me go,
did he have toxoplasmosis? Oh? I mean probably right, because
for those of you that don't know, if you have
a cat, you know, uh, toxoplasmosis is caused by a
(17:49):
parasite called toxoplasma gandhi, very common in cats, very very
common in cat feces. It's why if you're pregnant, you
are suggested to not clean the litter box in your
house because pregnant women are especially prone to contracting it,
(18:13):
as are people with you know, weakened immune systems. And
for a lot of people, if you're of robust health
and you know your immune system is fine, you won't
even show symptoms. You kind of it runs its course
and you're fine. But there have been some interesting studies
over the years about the way that people might behave differently.
(18:40):
There was was It and Wired. There was a huge
article some years back, like probably a decade ago that
suggested that some of the things that we consider crazy
cat lady behavior, the crazy part being what they were
focused on is actually like a manifestation of toxoplasmosis, that
it can make you more impulsive, mess with your judgment
(19:02):
in a way that would benefit the cats, because there
are a lot of parasites that work that way in
the natural world, where the parasite will help the host
animal earth or will help itself by making the host
animal do a certain behavior. Yeah, and I was like, well,
(19:25):
and my understanding of toxoplasmosis is that the source of
it in the cats is really rodents. When cats are
able to catch rodents, and that the toxoplasmosis facilitates that
by making the mice less fearful, and that makes it
(19:48):
easier for the cats to catch them and then get
the taxoplasmosis from them and then spread it in their feces.
I think they can also. It can also come from
meat and shellfish. Okay, lots of potential sources there, right,
(20:08):
So literally, like a cat food could potentially carry it
if it were not cooked fully, if it were not
you know, if it were exposed to air in some way, right,
there are those are Those are very common ways. But
for a human to get it from a cat, generally speaking, uh,
(20:30):
you have to have contact with cat poop m h,
which comes with having an animal. Anyway, I was like,
did ed Loo have toxic plasmosis? Is that why? His
family was like you're and he's like, I listen. The
issue of alcohol misuse is a whole other thing, and
(20:51):
I don't want to in any way play down the
seriousness of it, but it does make me wonder because
he was so adamant like no. Now, granted, some people
that are dealing with addiction will say no, So I
don't know. I don't know the personal thing, but it
did occur to me. Anyway, here's the other thing I
would like to end on. I'm going back to Alan Simon.
(21:13):
Praise you Alan Simon for the invention of potty pads
for pets. Oh yeah, because I stumbled upon a part
of the Internet I was not ready for the other day.
There's like a reddit anti dog subreddit, like people that
just don't like dogs and think having dogs in your
house is disgusting and gross and like one of those
(21:35):
and like whatever, I don't understand it, but whatever, having
a human in your house is disgusting and gross, Like
we all come with stuff. And there was a whole
big thing about how disgusting potty pads are for dogs
and the presumption that people are just putting them down
and letting their animals go all over the house. And
(21:56):
I'm like, I know you don't like dogs, but you
know that's potty training a dog, Like there will be
some whoopsie daisies, or if a dog becomes elderly and
they can't always control their stuff, or if your animal
dog or cat or any other has surgery and maybe
(22:19):
uses their level of locomotion for I mean, there are
so many valid reasons for it, but these people were
so mad that they even existed because they felt like
it promoted laziness on the part of pet people. And
I'm right. Yeah. My one time that I've ever used
them was when Cestina was in her last months of
life and she was still pretty much making it to
(22:42):
the litter box all the time, but she was she
would get into the litter box. She couldn't really squat anymore. Yeah,
arthritis will do that. Yeah, the urine was not going
into the box anymore, and so we just put a
puppy pat underneath it, yeah, sort of out the front
to catch anything. Yeah. Yeah, they're super handy. I mean
(23:06):
they have they have even for non pet things. Right,
if you're doing a weird craft project that has a
lot of fluid, put a puppy pad under it, because
that's a heck of a lot easier than trying to
mop up a mess with a towel afterwards, Like yep,
and all these things and more. Anyway, I know there
were hospital pads first, but now they're so easily gettable
(23:28):
at your local supermarket in the pet food I like,
thank you, Ellen Simon, that was great. Yeah, I hope
if you are training a puppy, that that training is
going well. I know there could be moments of exasperation,
but worth it. In the end. It's puppy who doesn't
like that. If you have this weekend coming up, free
(23:52):
to do whatever you wish, I hope that you fill
it with things that delight you, or that you don't
fill it at all and you just have like super
rest weekend, which sounds amazing to me. Right now, as
Tracy and I record this, we are getting ready to
leave the country. By the time you hear this, we
will be back, but right now we're both very tired
(24:13):
from preparation, so it sounds great to have two days
of rest. I'm hoping to rest on my flight. We
will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode,
and then on Monday we will have something brand new.
Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
(24:35):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about balloon riots this week.
Sure did an episode that was you know, one riot
(00:23):
was the request. I initially thought that it was going
to be about two riots, because the one that was
initially requested was one, and then the eighteen sixty four
one was the other one that immediately kind of showed
up in my preliminary research, and then I was like, oh,
there's a lot of them actually, and they all have
(00:45):
some striking similarities. And also it seems like everyone who
was opening a gardens somewhere that was either part of
the British Empire or had once been British territory, they
just all named them after gardens in London. Yeah, yeah,
same name, over and over. Yeah. It's that's one of
(01:06):
those interesting factors to me about early US history is
that there was so much we are our own new thing. Yeah,
but everything got named after something in Europe. Yeah yeah,
not everything, but a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah. It's
like people like to make fun of how weird. I mean,
(01:29):
not just in Massachusetts, but I feel like Massachusetts gets
a lot of it. How weird the pronunciation of town
names are compared to how they are spelled, and they're
all just pronounced roughly the same way as the same
spelled town in England. Is like, that's the reason, not
all of them, but a lot of the times that's
pretty much the case. I was, of course, reminded of
(01:51):
various sports related related riots that still happen. Yeah, when
a team wins something important or loses something important, although
a lot of times that is more like generic property destruction,
not chasing after the team that won or lost. To
(02:12):
set the ball on fire. Yeah, This whole like I'm
mad at the balloons, so we need to set it
on fire mentality is one that I just can't grasp. Yeah. Yeah,
one of the earliest things that we talked about about,
you know, the balloon launched, happening successfully, but then the
balloon which did not have a crew on it, kind
(02:33):
of coming down in a more rural area outside of Paris,
and then the local people attacking it. Like when I
saw that, I was like, this to me, does not
sound like necessarily a real thing that happened. It sounds
like It might more be a commentary about how whoever
was writing it thinks that rural people are dummies. But
(02:53):
the account saying that it was attacked with pitchport like,
that's pretty consistent. It shows up in several different places,
and I was like, maybe they really did attack the
thing that fell out of the sky. I don't know.
Humans are now in my head after this particular episode.
I know this intellectually. We have certainly studied the course
of human history enough to know, but you know that's
(03:14):
saying and I don't know if it's true that horses
are always a second away from madness. Sure, humans are
always a second away from violence. I feel like even
the most stayed human in the right circumstance will just
turn into a berserker and start stabbing things and setting
them on fire. I don't love that no everybody go
(03:38):
to therapy. I also think, like so often it really
seems like what like the initial run up to the
rioting was something involving a combination of boredom and disappointment.
And I'm sort of like imagining, like if if a
(03:59):
rain delay during a NASCAR race or a baseball game
or something suddenly caused the crowd to rush the field
and like break all the baseball bats or take baseball
bats to all the race cars. I don't know, right,
It's it's very weird. It it doesn't quite align with
(04:22):
I know, like I said, I know, there are still
things involving sport and spectacle that lead to some kind
of rioting or vandalism or whatever today. But it just
like the happening over and over and over in that
relatively short amount of time. It's just a little odd.
It is weird. I mean it's interesting too because ballooning
(04:43):
is in so many instances written about in this very
romantic kind of way. Right, the freedom of it, the
you know, sort of surreal experience of taking to the sky,
and then the flip of that culture is just people
being like, aw, let's kill it. I I don't know,
I don't know. There's an element of like how dare
(05:07):
you try to do something new and then not succeed
in it? Yeah, which I don't I'm not a fan
of obviously, Right. Well, and like we said in the episode,
it wasn't like they could go. It wasn't like it
could be secret. Like even if you had, say a
farmer had said yeah you can do this in my
(05:27):
field and the farmer lives somewhere with nobody around, maybe
you could get the balloon inflated without an audience being there.
But like then it's in the sky. People are going
to see it, right, It's going to be obvious, right,
and if you don't tell them it's going to happen,
they're going to think that we're being invaded by UFOs.
Possibly true. Yes, which is what inspired the Balloons of
(05:51):
World War two episode a couple of years back. Was
various weather balloons and spy balloons that were spotted and
raised alarm. Yeah. I mean there are lots of instances
of those kinds of things happening. Yeah, so you kind
of have to be public about it, yeah, because you
will terrify people. Yeah, raise reports of UFA there was
(06:16):
entertainment in the sky. That would be kind of amazing.
It would be I also can't help but think of
eggar all Impoe's balloon hoax. Oh yeah, that came up
in some of the research that I that was part
of this, and then I was like, that's a little
bit more of an aside than I want to include. Yeah. Yeah, which,
(06:38):
just in case anybody doesn't know he published a story
in the Sun in New York about claiming that someone
had crossed the Atlantic in a balloon in three days, right,
and people went wild. This was like, literally, it would
be the equivalent of somebody publishing an article tomorrow saying
I built a jet in my backyard and I flew
(07:01):
it to Mars. Yeah, and people would be like what
and that is what happened. And then he had to
retract it two days later and admit that it was
a hoax, and then nobody in them so funny. I
am still also just really stuck on, like thinking of
trying to have something that seems like a comparable phenomenon.
(07:25):
You know, there was like the whole Beatlemania phenomenon we
talked about Liz Domania on the show before, of people
just going absolutely out of their minds over Fran's list.
But like if it were today, if it were twenty
twenty five and people were going to like a Taylor
Swift concert and like the power went out, there was
(07:48):
no possible way to continue the show as normal. And
then what if the crowd just like rushed the cy
stage and destroyed all of the instruments and lighting. Yeah,
that would be wild and not really what I would
expect to happen currently in the world. I would totally expect, though,
people to knock over light poles and toilet paper houses
(08:11):
and stuff after sports winter loss. Anyway, it happens humans,
it does happen. Humans made for trouble apparently. Yeah, I
think we have exhausted all of the allotment of the
word balloon that could be said in an episode on
this one episode. That is a word that the more
you say it, it feels crazier and crazier, like your
(08:35):
brain goes this not a real word. There was one
sentence that I think you were you were saying it,
and I was like, why did I put the word
balloon so many times close together? Because that's what it's about, Bebby.
(09:00):
There's so much to talk about this week, because we
talked about pet inventions, and since you know, we both
have pets and many people in our listening audience do,
and we have experienced with lots of these products, plenty
(09:21):
to discuss. Also, a wild theory I have that has
absolutely no substance to it other than it occurred to me. OK,
But we'll talk about the other stuff first. One of
the things that came up a lot when I was
researching this in regard to Alan Simon. The last person
that we talked about who invented the we weie pad
(09:44):
was that in twenty nineteen, he put his very lavish
New York home on the market for forty million dollars. Wow.
And I looked at pictures and I understand and why
it was forty million dollars, even outside of it being
(10:05):
a prime location in New York that overlooks Central Park,
that was a lavishly decorated home. I understand that they
had to drop the price on it by about thirteen million.
That was the last thing I saw on it. So
presumably somebody bought it at like twenty seven million, but
(10:28):
I don't know for sure. But that's a lot of money.
But that was a very beautiful space, which I just
find interesting. He it also speaks to like how popular
pet products were. Yeah, and he was a very fascinating man.
Looking at videos with him, he's so interesting because he
(10:50):
talks like a guy from New York. He's very tan,
he is very straightforward. The obituary that I read of
him kind of hinted at how what a sweet man
he could be and how he was very dedicated to
his customers and you know, people with pets, but that
(11:11):
he also really loved business. And I'm like, was he
kind of like hardcore as a as a deal maker
but also was personally very sweet because that can certainly happen.
I just think he seems absolutely delightful. Yeah. Can we
talk about how ugly most cat trees are? Yo? We
(11:32):
sure can? That whole like can go with any decor.
It's elegant and beautiful, and I know there is a
big movement for like fansy cat trees. Yeah, but it's
also cat trees, by their nature are just hard to
be real cute you I don't know if you still
have but you don't know. Yeah, so you have one
(11:52):
that used to belong to me. That was a Christmas
present that was your standard poles wrapped in rope, covered
in carpet platforms. Cat tree, huge, real big. It's like
seven feet tall. It's a big one. It's a really
nice cat tree. So thank you because I still have
it and it's Marva's favorite place at night. Oh I
(12:15):
love it. Yeah, I'm like, how did I even get
that to my house? Like, I feel like it was
a Christmas gift for my parents, but then when I
moved to Massachusetts, there was going to be nowhere to
put it. Yeah, and like moving it to Massachusetts was
adding a whole additional thing to the expense of an
(12:38):
interstate move. And so now it's in my bedroom. Now
it belongs to Holly. I feel like I should also
tell you. I don't know if I ever told you this.
Uh huh. Our cat, Osle, who passed earlier this year,
up until he was eighteen, one of his favorite things
(13:00):
was to go to the very top of that cat
tree and then jump from it the roughly five feet
to our bed, okay, and just roll around like a
giggling cat, and wanted to be petty, and he would
do this over and over. It was his savor exercise
on her. Yeah. I also had been given that when
I had three cats, and when I was moving to Massachusetts,
(13:22):
I only had one cat who was in her elder
years and did not really use it. So anyway, when
we were ready to get more cats into our life
after we lost Cestina, I was looking for number one.
We had very specific space requirements, like where will a
(13:43):
cat tree fit? And then I didn't want something that
was just entirely covered in carpet for like allergen reasons,
and it took a lot to find something that would work.
And it is more attractive than a lot of cat
trees I feel are, But I also sort of felt like,
(14:07):
at least at that time, which this would have been
in twenty nineteen, it was the only one that existed
in the whole world. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing too,
is that there are, like I said, some very stylish
looking cat trees. In my experience having shopped for a
lot of them, they tend to be on the smaller side.
(14:27):
So if, like us, you have four cats, yeah, that's
not going to be enough. Yeah. The other thing is
that we similarly for a while, had all older cats,
so other than Ozl's dive bomb party, we didn't have
(14:50):
none of the other cats were really into the cat
tree situation. They were like, I'm gonna sit on the
couch or the bed because that seems easy to get
to and super cozy. But this year, as I have
mentioned before, we adopted three new cats who are all
about to turn seven because they're all from the same
litter and they need more yeah vertical party space. Yeah,
(15:18):
And so we ended up getting this huge monstrosity of
a cat tree that is in our kitchen, okay, because
they our kitchen is kind of I don't know how
well you remember it, but it's kind of a deepish space,
and there's a big tree that overlooks or a big
tree a big window that overlooks our deck at the
back of the kitchen. And so we were like, you
(15:39):
know what cats would love is a cat tree here,
and it may not be the cutest thing on earth,
but they will love it. Yeah, and they do. Like
that was a good call because it really helped with
transitioning them into our household and our other cats not
feeling like all their stuff got taken over because there
was a new thing. Right, But it's not cute. Buy
(16:00):
a cute or smaller, gothic y looking one that lives
in our living room, which is all Halloween all year round.
But they really prefer the kitchen, the ugly kitchen one, yeah,
because it's got a million places to go and it's
tall and they Jesse's big, but Donk doesn't fall out
of it, yeah, which is a very real, a very
(16:22):
real problem to solve in many spaces in our house.
Right Anyway, cat trees, and also big cat tries get
expensive in our they do. Yeah, yeah, I have sort
of I've I've I occasionally look around to see if
there is something specifically taller that would work somewhere in
(16:44):
our house for our cats. And it's one of those
things where I kind of idly poke around at it
and then go, no, I don't really see anything that
would work. But yeah, they can be really real pricey. Yeah. Okay,
(17:06):
are you ready for my possibly cokammy theory. Yeah, the
discussion the only reason if it stood out as any
to anybody as like that's a weird thing to include. Uh,
But the discussion of ed Low's fallout with his kids huh,
and the way they described his behavior. Yeah, and the
fact that he was kind of a crazy cat man,
(17:28):
by which I mean with love, like the way I
would call myself a crazy cat lady made me go,
did he have toxoplasmosis? Oh? I mean probably right, because
for those of you that don't know, if you have
a cat, you know, uh, toxoplasmosis is caused by a
(17:49):
parasite called toxoplasma gandhi, very common in cats, very very
common in cat feces. It's why if you're pregnant, you
are suggested to not clean the litter box in your
house because pregnant women are especially prone to contracting it,
(18:13):
as are people with you know, weakened immune systems. And
for a lot of people, if you're of robust health
and you know your immune system is fine, you won't
even show symptoms. You kind of it runs its course
and you're fine. But there have been some interesting studies
over the years about the way that people might behave differently.
(18:40):
There was was It and Wired. There was a huge
article some years back, like probably a decade ago that
suggested that some of the things that we consider crazy
cat lady behavior, the crazy part being what they were
focused on is actually like a manifestation of toxoplasmosis, that
it can make you more impulsive, mess with your judgment
(19:02):
in a way that would benefit the cats, because there
are a lot of parasites that work that way in
the natural world, where the parasite will help the host
animal earth or will help itself by making the host
animal do a certain behavior. Yeah, and I was like, well,
(19:25):
and my understanding of toxoplasmosis is that the source of
it in the cats is really rodents. When cats are
able to catch rodents, and that the toxoplasmosis facilitates that
by making the mice less fearful, and that makes it
(19:48):
easier for the cats to catch them and then get
the taxoplasmosis from them and then spread it in their feces.
I think they can also. It can also come from
meat and shellfish. Okay, lots of potential sources there, right,
(20:08):
So literally, like a cat food could potentially carry it
if it were not cooked fully, if it were not
you know, if it were exposed to air in some way, right,
there are those are Those are very common ways. But
for a human to get it from a cat, generally speaking, uh,
(20:30):
you have to have contact with cat poop m h,
which comes with having an animal. Anyway, I was like,
did ed Loo have toxic plasmosis? Is that why? His
family was like you're and he's like, I listen. The
issue of alcohol misuse is a whole other thing, and
(20:51):
I don't want to in any way play down the
seriousness of it, but it does make me wonder because
he was so adamant like no. Now, granted, some people
that are dealing with addiction will say no, So I
don't know. I don't know the personal thing, but it
did occur to me. Anyway, here's the other thing I
would like to end on. I'm going back to Alan Simon.
(21:13):
Praise you Alan Simon for the invention of potty pads
for pets. Oh yeah, because I stumbled upon a part
of the Internet I was not ready for the other day.
There's like a reddit anti dog subreddit, like people that
just don't like dogs and think having dogs in your
house is disgusting and gross and like one of those
(21:35):
and like whatever, I don't understand it, but whatever, having
a human in your house is disgusting and gross, Like
we all come with stuff. And there was a whole
big thing about how disgusting potty pads are for dogs
and the presumption that people are just putting them down
and letting their animals go all over the house. And
(21:56):
I'm like, I know you don't like dogs, but you
know that's potty training a dog, Like there will be
some whoopsie daisies, or if a dog becomes elderly and
they can't always control their stuff, or if your animal
dog or cat or any other has surgery and maybe
(22:19):
uses their level of locomotion for I mean, there are
so many valid reasons for it, but these people were
so mad that they even existed because they felt like
it promoted laziness on the part of pet people. And
I'm right. Yeah. My one time that I've ever used
them was when Cestina was in her last months of
life and she was still pretty much making it to
(22:42):
the litter box all the time, but she was she
would get into the litter box. She couldn't really squat anymore. Yeah,
arthritis will do that. Yeah, the urine was not going
into the box anymore, and so we just put a
puppy pat underneath it, yeah, sort of out the front
to catch anything. Yeah. Yeah, they're super handy. I mean
(23:06):
they have they have even for non pet things. Right,
if you're doing a weird craft project that has a
lot of fluid, put a puppy pad under it, because
that's a heck of a lot easier than trying to
mop up a mess with a towel afterwards, Like yep,
and all these things and more. Anyway, I know there
were hospital pads first, but now they're so easily gettable
(23:28):
at your local supermarket in the pet food I like,
thank you, Ellen Simon, that was great. Yeah, I hope
if you are training a puppy, that that training is
going well. I know there could be moments of exasperation,
but worth it. In the end. It's puppy who doesn't
like that. If you have this weekend coming up, free
(23:52):
to do whatever you wish, I hope that you fill
it with things that delight you, or that you don't
fill it at all and you just have like super
rest weekend, which sounds amazing to me. Right now, as
Tracy and I record this, we are getting ready to
leave the country. By the time you hear this, we
will be back, but right now we're both very tired
(24:13):
from preparation, so it sounds great to have two days
of rest. I'm hoping to rest on my flight. We
will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode,
and then on Monday we will have something brand new.
Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
(24:35):
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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