Short Takes

Niagara County SPCA in upstate New York calls itself the little shelter that could. It has a small staff of 19, a surgical trailer for sterilizations and a big population problem. Despite working with rescue groups and community cat caretakers, Executive Director Amy Lewis told WGRZ-TV in Buffalo that the city has 60,000 stray and feral cats compared to 50,000 people. As long as theyre not spayed or neutered, the number of homeless cats will keep increasing, she says. A lot of people dont spay and neuter - theres not low-cost, accessible spay-neuter programs for them. We do have one at the shelter, but we dont have the resources to accommodate large numbers of animals. The no-kill shelter sterilizes 40 to 50 cats a week but needs an in-house surgical suite to do more. Its board hopes to expand the facility or build a new one.

Cats have long endured the reputation for being fussy eaters. Weve known for a decade that, with some exceptions, most cats lack the taste receptor gene for sweets. Now a study suggests that they may have a legitimate reason for avoiding another flavor.

Students and volunteer citizen scientists, using motion-sensitive cameras at more than 2,100 sites in six Eastern states and the city of Raleigh, N.C., collected millions of images of domestic cats roaming outdoors at night. The result of North Carolina States exhaustive analysis of the images showed that the cats avoided parks and protected areas frequented by coyotes. Instead, they remained in residential areas, small urban forests and city trails.

Cute cat videos are all over the Internet and morning TV news shows, but to judge by a national survey of 1,023 people by PetSmart Charities, opinions about cats and their owners remain divided. A majority of respondents believe cats are intelligent, loving, cuddly and attractive but also invoked stereotypical adjectives such as moody, stubborn, aloof and grouchy. (You can bet grouchy cats have legitimate reasons for their mood, such as illness, pain or stress.)

Scientists have known for some time that certain strains of the feline coronavirus can lead to feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), a viral disease that is the leading infectious cause of death in cats under 2 years of age. However, the pathogenesis - the way the usually mild coronavirus develops into often-fatal FIP - remains a mystery.

The drug mirtazapine, used to treat depression in people, has a surprising side effect in pets: It can stimulate appetite and, in some cases, control nausea and vomiting, which are signs of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in cats.

The Food and Drug Administration has issued a warning about pets’ exposure to a topical non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drug after reports of deaths and illness in cats. Their owners had applied flurbiprofen cream or lotion to their own neck or feet to treat pain.

The Louisiana SPCA has found a novel solution to overpopulation at its New Orleans shelter. It sends dogs and cats to partner shelters miles away, where they can often be more quickly adopted. Its service is part of a small but growing trend in U.S. shelters and rescue organizations to save animals lives and find them forever homes.

Researchers have struggled for years to develop a nonsurgical way to sterilize dogs and cats. Now the Gary Michelson Found Animals Foundation has awarded a Harvard professor of bioengineering a $700,000 grant to develop a vaccine to sterilize animals by disrupting gonadotropin, a hormone that controls reproduction.

Updated guidelines on pain management from the American Animal Hospital Association and the American Association of Feline Practitioners are primarily intended for private practice veterinarians. The guidelines information-packed 18 pages cover the latest research and experts consensus on medications, but cat owners can find practical help, too. Examples: advice for the home environment and a new emphasis on complementary therapy.

Reports of dogs improving the social skills of children with autism have been widespread. A University of Missouri researcher, however, has found that any pet in the home can increase the childrens assertiveness, such as introducing themselves and asking for information. Gretchen Carlisle, a research fellow at the Research Center for Human-Animal Interaction at the College of Veterinary Medicine, studied 70 families with autistic children ages 8 to 18. About half of them had cats. Her findings: Younger children bonded more strongly to smaller dogs than large ones, but parents reported strong attachments between their children and other pets, such as cats, fish or rabbits. It serves as evidence that other types of pets could benefit children with autism, Carlisle says.One caution from behaviorist Katherine Houpt, VMD, Ph.D., at Cornell: Children may have difficulty distinguishing real from stuffed animals, especially small animals like cats. Be sure that the autistic child is gentle with the cat.

A new test for chronic kidney disease in cats has identified its onset an average of 17 months earlier than existing methods, according to a small study published in the Veterinary Journal. Researchers at Oregon State University and IDEXX Laboratory developed a biomarker - a substance indicating disease called SDMA - and used it in a controlled study of 32 older but otherwise healthy cats. When available commercially, a test based on the biomarker could alert cat owners and veterinarians to kidney disease through periodic checkups, researchers say.Chronic kidney disease is common in geriatric cats and often causes their death, says researcher Jean Hall, DVM, Ph.D., at Oregon State. Damage from it is irreversible, but this is an important advance, in that we should be able to identify the problem earlier and use special diets to slow the disease.