M3

Sanctuary

"These are rats that live in a laboratory. They have never been out of the laboratory. A researcher keeps track of how often they play. Basically, they play all of the time. They are born; they have this wonderful life; they live in a cage in a laboratory and they play, play, play.

The researcher put a “minimal fear stimulus” - a single cat hair - in their cage. Just one cat hair. Mind you, these are rats that have never seen a cat. He put one cat hair inside their cage and what do you think happened? They stopped playing completely. The cat hair was in the cage for 24 hours; and they did not play for 24 hours.

But what was even scarier, when he took the cat hair out, the rats never played the same amount of time again in their lives. So, one cat hair for 24 hours caused lifelong changes to playing behavior. 

When you think about the people we serve, some of them come from homes that are full of cat hair, some live with the cat. Some of them have lived in environments that are full of cat hair and what we want to make sure is that our organizations are not full of cat hair."

From Brian R. Sims, M.D.

Let's play way more again :)