Working on research about zoonoses and ectoparasites that require obtaining fur swabs from roaming cats. I have searched around and most references about sampling from cats deal with urine samples (and not swabs from the fur of cats, the focus of the project.)
Does anyone have suggestions or tips on acquiring such samples from the cats without posing a risk to either researcher or cat?
Sorry I'm not clear- are you after fur samples or urine samples?
If fur samples (as I initially understood it), you'll want to do a search for fur snagging/hair traps, which are pretty common in ecology.
E.g:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2006.00143.x/abstract
http://www.mammals-in-ireland.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/guidance-note-on-a-fur-snagging-system-for-pine-martens.pdf
http://www.velkeselmy.cz/knihovna/b/rok2012/Steyer_et_al_2012_Hair_trapping_with_valerian-treated_lure_sticks_as_a_tool_for_genetic_wildcat_monitoring_in_low-density_habitats.pdf
http://zbs.bialowieza.pl/g2/pdf/1556.pdf
Thank you Dr. Monyer Al-Fatlawi and Dr. Noaman Naji Aaiz for your replies.
Ms. Emily Perrin: Thank you for your reply. I've edited my post to make it clearer. I want to collect fur samples or fur swabs from the cats. I'll look through the resources you've shared.
(Also, if it helps in narrowing down suggestions: the cats to get samples from are roaming in a university/school environment.)
No problem- on further thought, you may struggle to get decent samples of the ectoparasites from hair samples and may find you need to actually catch and check the cats. However it would be worth a pilot I suspect- I assume the environment has limited other species that would frequent the hair traps which makes the process easier.
Thank you Ms. Perrin. Would also like to ask: are hair samples viable for microbiological assessment (such as culturing, plating, etc)?
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