Senator Joni Ernst has targeted pampered cats for her latest Squeal Award, which brings to light examples of governmental waste or inefficiencies. She says that a whopping $1.3 million of taxpayer money has been spent on 10 different cat studies with the National Institutes of Health. These concluded that classical music has an impact on the behavior of cats—one of these saying that after playing classical music every day, the animals were less likely to poop outside of their litter box or cough up hairballs. Another spent untold dollars on proving the obvious—that pampered cats were less likely to show signs of sickness or agitation, while those put into unpredictable situations tended to “freak out.” But this seemed to necessitate a follow-up study that proved once the pampering ended, the cats would refuse food, cough up hairballs and/or choose not to use a litterbox. Ernst says that not only are these pointless, the studies don’t comply with the laws requiring disclosure to the taxpayers on federally-funded projects. She is calling for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to find out why they are not reporting the costs and to work towards ensuring our hard earned dollars are not going to waste on studies like these.
