He was working in daylight now, not just in the dark interiors of CERN. His roommate who had adopted the cat had moved on without it, and the roommate who replaced him had taken a dislike to it (it made him sneeze) and wanted to get rid of it. He said cats were haram. Alarmed at the prospect of losing the cat, the Syrian had protested that that wasn’t true. The Prophet Himself had liked cats. He had a favorite named Muezza who sat on His lap while He preached. The Syrian hadn’t known any of this before (he’d never paid much attention to the religion classes in school), but he quickly discovered it by searching the internet on a cell phone he had stolen. It was the same cell phone he’d used to learn more about the parasite that lived inside the cat, more than he remembered from his childhood reading. It was called toxoplasma gondii and was way too small to be seen by the human eye. It reproduced in the body of a cat and, when it did, its eggs were expelled in the cat’s feces, where they were picked up by other scavenging animals. The parasite most preferred to be picked up by rats (not that the parasite had consciousness and will, but it acted as if it did). Once inside a rat, the parasite wanted (or “wanted”) to get back inside a cat, which is the only place it can breed. (Sex, the Syrian thought. Sex.) To accomplish this, it somehow migrated to the rat’s brain and rewired the rat’s natural impulses. Normally, rats fear and flee from the smell of cat urine. Rats with the parasite in their brains lose that fear. Normally, rats have no romantic interest in cats. Rats with the parasites in their brains misassociate cat urine with the presence of a potential mate (again, sex). So rats with the parasite in their brains do not run away from cats. They run toward them. So that cats can eat them. So that the parasite can get back inside a cat. Which is where it wants to be. So it can reproduce. (Sex.)

Honestly, the Syrian thought, if Allah wanted toxoplasma gondii to thrive, it would be a lot simpler to just put them inside cats and leave them there. But he supposed Allah must have His reasons.