Just What the Australian Authorities Are Looking for: Injectable Contraception for Feral Cats!

I can’t leave this discussion alone. The discussion about how the Australian authorities are deciding how to deal with what they consider to be a national pest and destroyer of native wildlife: the feral cat.

Core vaccinations at animal shelters

Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Toxic to cats | Dangers to cats

There must be a more humane, reasonable and decent way of dealing with the feral cats other than poisoning them, shooting them or in any other way killing them en masse. The authorities in Australia have ruled out TNR. It’s too humane and too slow and they think it’s ineffective.

Update: I have a more recent page on this topic about which starts as follows:

Why don’t the Australian authorities use immuno-contraception (IC) by vaccination to control the population feral cats in Australia which prey on native species and which annoy the Australian authorities so much? The vaccination could be given orally. And it seems to me that theoretically it could be given orally using the device that the clever Australians have devised to chuck 1080 poison over passing feral cats to kill them. The idea of this device is that the poison lands on the feral cat’s fur and then they lick it off. READ MORE BY CLICKING HERE.

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What about injection contraception? Here we have the ability to help control feral cat populations by catching the cat and then simply injecting them in the haunch. It would appear to be a method which may prove attractive even to the Australians because it is very simple, it is expedient and therefore it is cheap.

The only problem is that it is not yet available. The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) are researching a “vectored contraception” which works rather like a vaccine against pregnancy. The jab causes muscle cells to block a hormone which is required to reproduce. The hormone is essential in the making of eggs and for the maturing of sperm. Blocking the production of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) makes mammals infertile it is said.

The summary of the research says that the development of nonsurgical methods for long-term contraception is a challenge. They show that injection into the muscles of a “replication-incompetent, recombinant adeno-associated virus designed to express an antibody that binds…..a master regulator of reproduction in invertebrates results in long-term infertility in male and female mice.”

At 2016, the Caltech study appears to be have been extended to the Cincinnati Zoo were a pilot program is taking place with female cats.

I hope that the Australian authorities read this article, investigate the matter further, contact Caltech, help fund their research, do their own research and then come to the conclusion that this sort of contraceptive program is the best way forward. What chance of that 😉 !



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10 thoughts on “Just What the Australian Authorities Are Looking for: Injectable Contraception for Feral Cats!”

  1. How ridiculous! If you can catch a cat and inject it with a chemical that will eventually wear off, why not spay/neuter it? That is at least permanent.

    My Office Manager, Rex, my Office Assistant in Training, Cleopatra, and I have come to the conclusion that “Aussies Rule” is definitely none other than the infamous “Woody” who needs to find a better hobby. Too bad he isn’t like teeth; ignore them and they will go away.

    Having been around outside cats for over 50 years, my experience supports the fact that anti-cat people’s theoretical viewpoint is completely unfounded. Very few cats are successful in killing birds and other wildlife, especially when well-fed, proving these fanatics just want to ruffle cat-fanciers’ feathers.

    What about the dogs that have destroyed wildlife, including the dodo birds? What about the feral hogs that destroy everything, plants and wildlife? I don’t hear anyone screaming about them. Maybe they need to get jobs and stay off internet sites that have anything to do with animals?

    Reply
    • They’re not screaming about the feral hogs and feral dogs because they are all shot to death — same as all stray cats in rural areas are dealt with (collared or not, still legal).

      all the remainder deleted by Michael because it was written that well-known sh*t: Woody. Bye Bye.

      Reply
  2. Let us all applaud Jim/Woody for, yet, another puzzle as to whether he is psychotic, sociopathic, or both.
    My diagnosis is an overloading consumption of bird droppings.

    Reply
    • You need to start shuffling your little cat-slippers over to the grounds of Dade Miami Zoo and stop them from killing all the cats. That should keep you busy. 🙂 Next they’ll take care of your hoards of illegal cats too. Perhaps you’ll be thrown in prison for killing Florida Panthers with your cats’ diseases, or from all the Manatee that you’ve killed with them. At least you’ll have a home worthy of you.

      Reply
  3. I don’t see any difference between TNR and an injectable contraceptive.
    If the cats are trapped, spay/neutering and injection have the same outcome. One involves surgery, the other involves chemicals.
    I think that the crazy Aussies just want to exterminate, a very temporary fix. They just want the numbers down immediately with no thought of reality.

    Reply
  4. One other little flaw to your psychotic conjecture — cats cannot be trapped faster than they breed. This is why trap & kill failed, as well as TNR being an even bigger failure — even in your own country.

    Reply
  5. And just how does this stop the 20 million cats there from making tortured play-toys out of all the rare and near-extinct native wildlife?

    And just how does this stop the 20 million cats there from killing all the marsupials there with cats’ Toxoplasma gondii parasites? Zoos all over the world (the most recent being Miami Zoo) are now destroying all free-roaming cats on their properties and in all surrounding communities because the presence of your cats are killing all the marsupials in all zoos around the world.

    Will you ever escape from your cat-shat Toxoplasma gondii brain-damage psychoses?

    I hear there is no cure, it is a permanent lifetime parasite that has now taken control of your own mind, parasitic worms riddling your brain are now making your choices for you — so the answer to that would be “no”. There is no escape nor hope for you. Some women find-out there there is only one way out — suicide. It causes women to commit suicide when they find out their brains have been taken-over by a parasitic worm from their cats’ asses.

    Reply

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