For years, many people have claimed that cats have improved their lives. Now a University of Minnesota study has found that those without cats were between 30 and 40 percent were more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than cat owners.
In the study, researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Stroke Research Center looked at 4,435 people, aged 30 to 75 years. They found that over a 20-year period that those who had never owned a cat had a 40 percent greater risk of death due to heart attack and a 30 percent higher risk of death due to any sort of cardiovascular disease than previous or current cat owners.
Dog owners did not see the same benefits.
Of course, living with a cat won’t just extend your life, but it will make your life feel a lot longer because you’ll have to devote much of your time caring for your cat. Still, if you want to live longer, you can’t do worse than get a cat.