Programs & Campaigns

A Voice for All Animals

Cats and NEAVS Don't Fancy this Cat Fancy Article

June 29, 2001

Keith Bush
Managing Editor
Cat Fancy
P.O. Box 6050
Mission Viejo, CA 92690

Where did Cat Fancy acquire the information for its August 2001 article "Catnaps Boost Brainpower"? Certainly the author is not familiar with this experiment by Michael Stryker and co-workers at University of California, San Francisco. From your article and the photo of the peaceful sleeping kitten one would assume the kittens were in a harmless study—far from it!

In this single experiment alone, Stryker and his co-vivisectors sutured one eye shut of 22 three-and-a-half-week-old kittens. These kittens had stainless steel screws and wires implanted into their brains. Kittens this young would typically sleep most of the day. Most of these kittens, however, were forced to stay awake by being on a "motorized cage floor" for approximately 12 hours. If this isn’t enough cruelty, the vivisectors also paralyzed and artificially ventilated the kittens in preparation for brain recordings. Lastly, the kitten’s brains were removed and examined.

Not only are Stryker’s experiments cruel and a crude model of human brain development, they are a very poor use of valuable research funds. Stryker has received millions of your tax dollars since 1979 to experiment on kittens and cats. From 1998 to 2000 alone he received one million dollars for this long-term, unnecessary, unproductive, project.

We wish the kitten experiment was as harmless as your article implies. However, your readers deserve the truth. These kittens’ tortured, brief lives deserve our compassion and our commitment to stop such atrocities. These experimenters deserve our condemnation.

Sincerely,

Ann Stauble
Director of Research and Investigations

For further information, contact Melinda Everett, APR, Director of Media and Public Relations: 617-523-6020 x17 or meverett@ma.neavs.com.