As detailed in a recent paper in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, the research facility was created by University of Illinois researchers in order to study a new type of feline contraceptive that could drastically reduce feral cat populations. Although spaying and neutering cats is an effective way to control feline populations, the minor surgeries are expensive and invasive. An injectable contraceptive vaccine called GonaCon showed promise as an alternative population control mechanism in a variety of mammals, including laboratory-raised cats, but testing its effectiveness in the wild proved difficult. [...]
"Many facilities have come a long way in making research conditions more humane for the animals, but they still involve small enclosures without a lot of enrichment," said Amy Fischer, a researcher at the University of Illinois’ Department of Animal Sciences. "We wanted to make our cats' environment much more stimulating."
Of the 35 cats that live in the lab, 30 are female and all the cats were taken from local animal shelters. This in itself was a major departure from usual research protocols, which almost always use genetically identical, lab-raised cats. The hope was that this would provide better insight into the effectiveness of the vaccine as it would actually work in the wild.
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