Allergies Are Weird. So Are Cats

Short Wave

NPR

Science, Life Sciences, News, Nature, Daily News, Astronomy

4.7 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Katie Wu is a bona fide cat person. She has two of them: twin boys named Calvin and Hobbes. Every night, they curl up in bed with her, bonking their little noses together, rubbing their fur and whiskers everywhere, and leaving behind inevitable cat residue. It's certifiably cute ... and a little bit gross.

It's also the worst nightmare for the cat-allergic. Which, just shy of a decade ago, Katie was. In a stroke of luck, Katie's debilitating cat allergy disappeared. The reasons for her immune overhaul remain a mystery.

Allergies can wax and wane over time, but it seems to be less common to have the night-and-day shift that Katie experienced. In this episode, Katie walks host Aaron Scott through the dynamic world of allergies and what it reveals about our immune systems. And of course, Katie's cats make cameo appearances. (encore)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:06.2	The nervous one is closed by, but one second.
0:10.6	Oh, can you mail again?
0:16.4	Kiti Wu is a cat person.
0:18.1	She has twin tabby brothers, Calvin and Hobbs.
0:21.3	The mowing you heard came from Hobbs.
0:24.2	Hobbs is a Zoom enthusiast, but a nothing else enthusiast.
0:29.7	He is afraid of food, human beings, other cats, heavy steps, vacuum cleaners, wind and
0:41.5	foil.
0:42.5	He likes having his teeth rubbed, so I'm doing that to calm him down.
0:46.1	Kiti loves her boys, but she wasn't always a feline mother of two.
0:51.4	In fact, this wasn't a situation she ever saw herself in at all.
0:56.2	If we put me 10 years ago into this exact room, it would be a catastrophe.
1:04.2	Tell us about it.
1:05.2	What would happen?
1:06.2	Oh, I missed that pun.
1:09.2	Okay.
1:10.2	Yeah, so basically for the first, I'd say 20 years of my life, I wouldn't say definitely
1:20.5	allergic to cats, but whatever is one tier below deathly allergic to cats, I'd walk
1:25.6	into a room either where there were cats or where cats had recently been or as
1:30.5	dissently as months ago, and my body could tell.
1:34.8	My eyes would start watering, my nose would immediately clog up, I would feel my throat
	...

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