Monday, September 05, 2005
Better Living Through Chemistry
My Organic Chemistry professor in undergrad school was an interesting soul. It was the late '70's and he had completed his gradutate work in the late '60's with all the personal habits that entailed. Thus whenever we considered a new functional group in lecture, he would begin my telling us what the psychoactive compounds in that group were. This led to a number of interesting syntheses in lab.
Anyway, it appears he, or someone just like him, has turned their attentions lately to felines.
Anyway, it appears he, or someone just like him, has turned their attentions lately to felines.
Feline experts are unlocking some of the mysteries behind catnip's intense effect on cats, according to a recent report in Chemical & Engineering News.I better get to work on a synthesis -- I could "cook" the stuff in the kitchen and sell nickel bags out the window to all the neighborhood cats. Soon dogs would be "turning them out," and the street would be a cat stroll. Quite the picture, isn't it?
At the center of the mystery is the herb's volatile essential oil, nepetalactone. Carolyn McDaniel, a veterinarian at the Feline Health Center at Cornell University who contributed to the report, theorizes that it must be very similar to a substance that all cats respond to, like a pheromone.
