My post last week about hybrid cats seems like a good transition into the next part of my blog: wildlife conservation. This week I will be highlighting the mighty Cheetah. Cheetahs are personally my favorite animal after regular house cats, and it is devastating to me to know that their populations are struggling right now.

Fig. 1 Cheetah

Cheetah’s are known for their speed and agility on the African savannah. They can run up to 23 feet in a single bound and up to 60-70 miles per hour! This makes them the fastest land mammal on the planet; however, this speed comes at a price. The cheetah has small teeth to give room for large nasal passages. This makes the cheetah less able to fight off predators such as lions, and if they are forced to choose between fighting over prey and running away from a lion, they will run away and will be left without food. Cheetahs are also extremely interesting because they do not roar. Cheetahs will typically make noises more like chirping and can even purr!

These are amazing animals but are currently considered to be a vulnerable species on the endangered species list. Human activity and habitat destruction has caused the cheetah population to drastically decrease over the last century. Cheetahs have become extinct in 13 African countries over the last 50 years, and only around 7,000 remain compared to 100,000 in 1900. The situation is only getting worse. Due to the destruction of the cheetah’s habitat in Africa, cheetahs have started to wander onto farms, leading to their deaths at the hands of farmers trying to protect their livestock. It’s not the farmers’ fault, as they are only trying to protect their livelihoods, but it is definitely the fault of someone. Cheetah populations are also declining because of illegal trade. Wild cheetahs are caught and sold illegally as exotic pets to the extreme rich around the globe, further damaging their natural populations.

Fig. 2 The Cheetah Conservation Fund’s Research and Education Centre in Namibia

I chose the Cheetah to highlight in this post, but these issues are happening to animal populations across the globe, and they can only be saved by human intervention. There are many conservation groups across the globe working to save animals like the Cheetah, and the only way for many of them to do their work is by getting donations. You can also go to Africa and volunteer, but that’s something that you would have to dedicate a lot of time and money into, and not everyone is able to do that, including me; however, the best way to help is to spread awareness. We can’t just let these animals suffer in silence, and making a fuss out of it spurs change, and hopefully one day we can bring these animal populations back.

A large amount of people in the United States own cats, and a majority of those people have normal house cats, but what about the exotic hybrid breeds that some people are drawn to. There has recently been some controversy over this topic, somewhat due to Justin Bieber buying two “half-wild” kittens. They might look pretty, but these breeds have a lot of issues with them that I will be highlighting in this blog post.

Fig. 1 Savannah Cat

Some people are drawn to the ultra-expensive cat breeds that are made to look like wild cats, but don’t actually know what they are getting themselves into. “Exotic” cat breeds like the Savannah cat (a hybrid between a house cat and an African Serval cat) can have many of the wild traits, especially in early generations. This causes them to be very bad indoor pets, but most people don’t like to let their cats roam the neighborhood, especially since cats like Savannahs have extremely high hunting instincts. Being cooped up in a house all day causes a lot of behavior issues if they are not exercised and played with at all times of day, and most people don’t want to put in that much effort into having a cat. People who buy these cat breeds oftentimes don’t know what they’re getting into, and this causes a lot of unhappiness in owners and sometimes they even have to rehome the cats in order to solve the issues they are having; however, rehoming these cats is extremely difficult due to their wild nature. Most wildlife sanctuaries and big cat sanctuaries have to have waiting lists for accepting Savannah cats because there are just so many that people want to rehome, and if a cat is having behavioral issues like most Savannahs end up having due to the circumstances, regular cat owners might not be willing to adopt them. This leaves the owner of the “exotic” cat with the choice of either keeping the cat until a sanctuary can accept them or dumping them in a shelter or on the streets, and either situation will cause issues.

Fig. 2 Savannah Cat at a Big Cat Sanctuary

With the amount of cats in shelters, there is never a reason to buy an “exotic” kitten that can cost up to $10,000, and if you want that “cool cat” look, you can admit that some tabbies look pretty wild sometimes! These cats are suffering because prospective cat owners don’t know what they’re getting into and pay big bucks for kittens they don’t know how to properly take care of, causing unhappiness in both the owner and the kitten. Sure, some “exotic” cat breeds have less issues with being indoors than others, but buying these “less-wild” breeds only encourages breeders to make more and exacerbate the issue. Cats are not toys to buy and dispose of once problems occur, and plenty are suffering in shelters across the United States. I urge you to please check out your shelters before paying a breeder for a kitten you won’t know how to deal with.

“Exotic” cats are not bad cats, but if you don’t have experience and don’t know how to take care of them, things can turn out not so ideal.

This week I will be enlightening you all on something different from what I usually do. This piece of animal welfare directly has to do with the United States Government. In this past year, the KITTEN Act, or Kittens in Traumatic Testing Ends Now Act, was introduced into Congress, and although it never was formally passed, it sheds light on issues within governmental agencies when it comes to the wellbeing of animals.

Fig. 1 Actual Images of Two of the Cats at the Experimentation Facility

Since 1982, the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) has been performing experiments on kittens concerning food-borne illnesses. They purposefully bred cats and fed young kittens contaminated food, causing them to become ill. They then studied the effects and euthanized the kittens afterward despite them would have been able to fully recover and live out relatively full lives. There were also allegations that the research forced the cats to be subjected to cannibalism.

USDA administrators have confirmed that over 2000 cats had been used in this experiment since it began in 1982 and has overall cost around 22 million dollars. They claimed that the kittens had to be euthanized because the food-borne bacteria could spread to humans, but this has been disproved and the likelihood of gaining the illness from the kitten is extremely low.

An investigation from the organization White Coat Waste Project initially discovered the tragic experiments and has been fighting against it ever since.

This past spring, the KITTEN Act was introduced to Congress calling for a stop to these experiments and prevention of future ones, and although not much came out of it legislation wise, the USDA declared on April 2^nd that they would cease all experimentation on cats, a big win for the KITTEN Act supporters.

Fig 2. Kitten Lady with Lawmakers Advocating for KITTEN Act

I first learned about this initiative through the Youtube channel Kitten Lady, whom I’ve mentioned before in previous blog posts. Hannah Shaw has done so much work for animal welfare and even visited congressmen at Capitol Hill specifically to promote the KITTEN Act. As a cat lover and someone with animal shelter experience, the thought of inhumanely experimenting on cats personally makes me sick to my stomach. Many people think that inhumane animal experimentation ended decades ago and seems like such an outdated commonplace, but it still happens, even in our own government. Intentionally breeding kittens only to slaughter them for little reason is completely ridiculous today, and personally I am glad that this Act had an impact and stopped theses dreadful experiments.

Experiments like this still happen today, and at least one of them has been stopped, but there might be more that we don’t even know about, so the fight is not over yet.