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In his novel Netherland, Joseph O’Neill discusses several issues that arise for a contemporary wanderer or immigrant, namely, issues of adjustment, cultural transition, becoming visible, etc. The search for a new home is accompanied by the idea of a new place and the memory of the native place. Immigrants provide a particular perspective of the city from the position of an outsider. New York is the city that allows seeing the correlation between a geographic perception and the idea of a place that is formed by an immigrant. Real places of New York and their fictional representations in O’Neill’s novel become the focus of this study. The geocritical approach is employed as a productive tool for the analysis of New York spatiality and myth-making.

The effect of urine chemosignals of domestic male cats (Felis catusL.) on the stability of the bone marrow cell genome and corticosterone level in blood plasma of recipient mice (Mus musculusL.) is studied. It is demonstrated that a two-hour sniffing of volatile chemosignals leads to an increase in the frequency of bone marrow cells with damaged DNA, while 24 h exposure to chemosignals leads to an increase of chromosomal aberrations frequency in these cells. Thus, the effect of genomic instability induction in bone marrow cells of house mice by predator’s chemosignals is for the first time demonstrated in the work. At the same time, no increase in the corticosterone level is detected in the blood plasma either 30 or 60 min after the beginning of the exposure to the chemosignals of cat urine (CU). The physiological factors contributing to DNA damages accumulation in bone marrow cells, as well as the long-term consequences of the effect of these chemosignals on the genome stability, are discussed.