The Paris Institute of Science and Baloney have completed a twenty-year study into women's fertility and concluded that cats make women infertile.
"In our study," said Eyam Bonquers, lead biologist in the study, "we see a definite correlation between the number of cats and the number of children. The two are directly inversely proportional."
In addition, men are particularly attuned on a sub-conscious level to this fact already, with the study showing that once the number of cats exceeds five, the chances of the woman being married drop drastically.
"One of the participants in the study," said Bonquers, "had fifteen cats. She had never even had a boyfriend."
The study discounted possible causes, such as disease transmission from the cats to humans, as even those cats kept scrupulously clean and inoculated to insensibility still had an owner without children. Although there was only two owners who kept their cats this clean, so it could still be an aberration.
The team are currently investigating other possible causes for this remarkable synergy, with the current front running explanation being that the smell of cats drives men away. Although the cats walking into the bedroom at inconvenient times cannot be discounted at this early stage.
Getting rid of the cats before menopause was enough to reverse the problem, with several of the women reporting pregnancy within months of ditching the felines.