Many thanks
🕊thatcrowwoman

hopefully it will work

If the procedure became widespread

I know nothing about gene therapy but if multiple injections would not be harmful, the possibility of a permanent, non-surgical birth control for stray/feral cats is promising.

While controlling cats is a noble cause -- my wife is a big time bird watcher -- I worry that this might lead to a kinder gentler form of genocide. Would you even know it had been done to you until years of infertility made you suspicious?

And genocide is: "the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying."

You know the world is overheating and overly populated now, right? There's a correlation. Check this:
https://www.magellantv.com/articles/overpopulation-in-the-era-of-climate-change

However, I understand what you are saying:

it would be as if Russia just rendered all Ukrainians infertile and just waited to take their land many decades later.

Forced sterilization and also taking the children, even if you do not kill them, and dispersing them to adoptive parents of other cultures is also considered genocide. Not my idea -- I had a big argument about this over on Reddit over a plot point in a story I wrote, and it was specifically about using an infertility virus to make sure humans returned a world to the aliens we'd been borrowing it from. Turns out the other guy was right. And it's exactly because of the last line of your post.

It would greatly reduce the cost of trapping, neutering, and releasing. Since the long term health consequences aren't known, or whether the shot wears off some years down the line, I doubt it will be recommended for domestic cats for a very, very long time.

It would also be great for invasive colonies in places like the Galapagos Islands.

It would actually be more effective if the sterilized girls remain sexually active because then they would be distracting still-fertile males from opportunities with fertile females.

Our neighborhood, and especially my block, is overrun with feral/stray cats and few people here can afford to spay/neuter even the animals they (loosely) consider to be their own.

A few doors down from us, a neighbor started feeding some stray kittens (as we've done in the past, as well). They grew up and now both have a litter of kittens living under his porch. My wife and I have discussed paying for the two females to get fixed (they would be relatively easy to catch), but we have nowhere to keep them while they recover from surgery. Our house is already full with the six local cats we've rescued (and neutered). And even if we get the two mother cats fixed, some of those kittens are going to survive, and we can't afford the cost of neutering another 1/2 dozen cats.

One shot each, no recovery room needed? Sign me up!

I can't imagine trapping and injecting feral cats across, say, the Australian Outback would provide enough coverage to control their population economically. Given the sheer number of cats out there, you'd need a small army of volunteers and live traps.

But for urban and suburban areas, this could be a game changer. Petco could have spay shot clinics and save people hundreds of dollars. People like my sister, who won't get her cats spayed because of the cost, and is therefore constantly giving away kittens, wouldn't have an excuse anymore.