In her Ocala neighborhood, 60-year-old Becky Saucier discovered several feral cats wandering the streets. One male cat started to antagonize her cat for territory.
Since 2006, 15 stray and feral test cats have been observed by researchers from the UF College of Veterinary Medicine in hopes of finding a means of controlling stray cat populations. The answer was found in GonaCon, an immunocontraceptive vaccine that targets a key reproductive hormone in the brain called GnRH.
UF and the Department of Agriculture have pioneered a single-dose vaccine with long-term effects on fertility in adult female cats, according to a UF news release. The college was issued a $250,000 grant by the Morris Animal Foundation to complete the study to find a nonlethal alternative to controlling feral cats, lead researcher Julie Levy said.
Of the cats treated with GonaCon, 93 percent showed infertility results for a full year and at the end of the fifth year, 27 percent were found to remain infertile.
"When stray animal populations are treated, it is not essential that every individual animal be infertile," Levy said, "just that a large proportion of them are."
Saucier said she doesn't necessarily agree with the treatment but she thinks it is a step forward.
"This new development in contraception for cats would certainly be better than killing them," she said.
