(Beth Clifton collage)
Will the “staggering disease” discovery become a factor in the Cats Aren’t Trophies ballot initiative campaign?
DENVER––How did “staggering disease” jump from domestic cats in Sweden, Austria, and Scotland into a wild puma [mountain lion] in Douglas County, Colorado?
What effect might the discovery of “staggering disease” in a Colorado puma have upon the Cats Aren’t Trophies ballot measure, expected to go before state voters in the November 5, 2024 general election?
The ballot measure, advanced by Animal Wellness Action and the Center for A Humane Economy, seeks to stop puma hunting in Colorado.
(See Pumas, pit bulls, furriers & slaughterhouse all on 2024 Colorado ballot.)
One-year-old female mountain lion infected with “staggering disease.”
(CDC photo)
“Staggering disease” does not spread cat-to-cat
Hunters and ranchers can be expected to argue that the presence of “staggering disease” signifies that pumas must be hunted to prevent the spread of disease among them.
Yet “staggering disease” is not known to spread from cat to cat, or from cats to any other animals. The as yet unidentified host species, presumed to be multiple closely related species, are believed by the few experts on “staggering disease” to be small rodents.
“Staggering disease,” moreover, rare even where the most cases have been found, is unlikely to be any threat to the Colorado puma population.
(National Park Service photo)
First confirmed case in North America
“A sick mountain lion euthanized by Colorado Parks & Wildlife officials in Douglas County last year was the first confirmed case of staggering disease in North America,” reported Katie Langford for The Denver Post on July 17, 2024.
“Staggering disease,” explained Langford, “a usually fatal neurologic syndrome seen in domestic cats in Europe, is caused by the rustrela virus and is marked by animals staggering, having trouble walking, or behaving abnormally.”
Colorado Parks & Wildlife officers “first received reports of the sick mountain lion in a residential area of Douglas County on May 12, 2023,” explained Langford, “and found that it was struggling to move or put weight on its back legs.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Sent to German laboratory
“The mountain lion was euthanized and tested for a variety of diseases, all of which came back negative. Because the symptoms were similar to ‘staggering disease,’ seen in Europe, wildlife officials sent tissue samples to the Friedrich-Leoffler-Institut in Germany,” a Colorado Parks & Wildlife spokesperson said.
Colorado Parks & Wildlife told media that “staggering disease” has “also been found in rodents, a donkey, marsupials and zoo animals including lions,” Langford reported.
“Staggering disease,” which “involves the inflammation of the brain and spinal cord in European domestic cats (_Felis catus_), was first described in Sweden in the 1970s and in Austria in the 1990s,” the online periodical Science X summarized on February 8, 2023.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Related to human rubella virus
Formally known as feline meningoencephalomyelitis, “staggering disease” was not linked to a causal source until “some 50 years after the first discovery of the disease, a team of researchers affiliated with several institutions including the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna,” identified the infectious agent as the rustrela virus, “a relative of the rubella virus that infects humans,” Science X said.
The findings appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications.
“For a long time,” Science X continued, “the rubella virus that infects humans was considered to be the only representative of the Rubivirus genus. The recent discovery of 2 other rubiviruses infecting animals, however, suggests that the rubella virus, like SARS-CoV-2, may have found its way to humans through a zoonotic pathway.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Science took 50 years to identify the virus
Two of the Nature Communications study co-authors, Herbert Weissenböck and Norbert Nowotny, faculty members at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, were also part of the three-member team who published the first scientific description of “staggering disease,” along with veterinarian Josef Zoher.
“Based on the pathological changes, it was already clear to us at that time that it must be a viral infection,” Nowotny told Science X.
“However, the scientific methods were not yet sufficient to confirm this assumption and to identify the causative virus,” said Nowotny.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Found mostly in pet cats
Although reported in other species, “staggering disease” has been confirmed primarily in felines, mostly in domestic pet cats.
“Affected cats show behavioral changes and motor disorders, which manifest themselves mainly in ataxia (impaired coordination) and other gait disturbances, and subsequently paresis and paralysis of the hind limbs,” Science X recounted.
“In Austria, the disease has been detected exclusively in the Marchfeld region,” about ten miles east of Vienna, “with a strikingly high incidence in the 1990s,” Science X finished. “After that, however, the disease became increasingly rare, and no further cases have been detected within the last 10 years. The reasons for this remain unclear.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Case cluster in Scotland
The cluster of “staggering disease” cases centering around Leopoldsdorf im Marchfelde was followed in 2011-2012 by a less tightly grouped cluster of about 50 cases in the rural area between Inverness and Aberdeen, Scotland, with an isolated case identified in the same time frame in Liverpool, England.
That cat may have previously spent time in Scotland.
The disease, reported Fiona Macrae for the Daily Mail, caused the cats’ legs to “become rigid, giving them an odd, stiff gait. Their personality changes and their tail stiffens and sticks out. There is no known treatment or cure. The symptoms become progressively worse and the animals are put down when their suffering becomes too much.”
(Beth Clifton photo)
“They look like robots”
“’They look like robots. They get a bit lost and get stuck in corners and don’t know how to reverse and turn around,” Aberdeenshire veterinarian Jeannette Andrew told Macrae.
Added Edinburgh University professor of feline medicine Danielle Gunn-Moore, “Their head is forward, their chin is slightly down, and their ears are forward.”
“Vets have tried treatments including painkillers, vitamins, antibiotics and drugs normally given to multiple sclerosis sufferers,” wrote Macrae, “but none has held the disease at bay.
“The animals, who are usually elderly,” unlike the one-year-old puma found in Colorado, “gradually become more disabled and when they start to find it hard to swallow, they are usually put down – normally within a year of falling ill.”
Puma at Big Cat Rescue.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Cats Aren’t Trophies petitions await certification
The Cats Aren’t Trophies ballot measure is not yet officially on the November 5, 2024 Colorado state ballot, but “Animal Wellness Action and its partners submitted 188,000 signatures on July 3, 2024 [to the Colorado Secretary of State] in support of Cats Aren’t Trophies,” Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle told ANIMALS 24-7.
(Beth Clifton collage)
A little more than 120,000 of those 180,000 signatures need to be found valid to put Cats Aren’t Trophies before the voters.
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