A reader wrote to us the other day about some small, striped worms she found by her cat’s food. The reader’s cat “doesn’t seem to carry worms on him,” and she has looked in vain for information on the worms she found. The reader is “kind of panicking right now,” and so she asked us a series of questions in rapid succession about the cat food worms: “Are these worms dangerous for humans? Are they dangerous for my cat? Do I need an exterminator? What are they? Are they parasites?” This is a lot of questions, but they are all wrapped up with the matter of identification – the “what are they?” part of the list of questions – and since we have a reasonably good idea of what the worms by the cat food are, all the questions can be handled more or less at the same time.