Cat in a cage trap, QLD: Lonely Planet images

Is anyone else seeing a trend? From Queensland last year;

The Animal Management (Cats and Dogs) Act 2008 was passed on December 11 2008 and is designed to encourage responsible pet ownership by introducing compulsory registration and identification. The Act took effect throughout south-east Queensland councils on July 1 2009, with the rest of the state scheduled to come in line within two years.

And now today;

Leanne Christie fears her neighbourhood has become a street of missing moggies, after three of her much-loved cats disappeared.

The animal lover said the most recent loss was last week, when her seven-month-old kitten Cougar vanished one afternoon — but her neighbours have also complained of disappearing pets.

“I’ve had three cats disappear in a year and my neighbours say they’ve lost two cats this year,” she said. “Another lady down the street lost her cat and there’s always posters up for missing cats.”

She said she knew of about eight cats that had vanished in recent months.

Due to the large number of missing animals, Miss Christie believes they are being deliberately caught and taken away.

RSPCA Bundaberg shelter manager Vicki Beer said it was not unusual for free-roaming cats to disappear.

“Any neighbour could have a cat trap in their yard and it’s quite within their rights to trap your animal if it comes on their property,” Ms Beer said. “They should bring (trapped cats) to the RSPCA or tell the council, but that doesn’t always happen.”

See that’s bad. We should be against that. It’s not reducing shelter intakes (and killing) if people are trapping owned (and unowned!) cats and taking them to the shelter. We should be working on things that keep cats out of shelters.

Like this:”Cove officials, residents learn how to control city’s feral cat population”;

Mike Fry stressed that a lethal method to controlling cat colonies is an expensive and never-ending battle.

“Once the carrying capacity for the population is reached, for each adult that is removed, there are plenty of kittens to take its place,” he said.

The most successful method is the “TNR” process by which animals are trapped, neutered or spayed and released back into the colony. Fry said the goal is to sterilize at least 70 percent of the population — that is the key number to stop the growth of the colony.

“It’s the only solution right now that works,” he said. “And if done correctly, it can be an incredible success.”

We’re ignoring experiences like this, in preference of;

new law -> trapping increases -> blame society, come up with newer law -> empower trappers even further -> trapping increases…

Being played out time and time again. I wonder how many examples we’ll need, how many thousands of cats will need to die, before we finally acknowledge that blaming the public and dreaming up new laws is not working?

Cat groups in Western Australia are celebrating, as the pledge for statewide cat laws was today unveiled by the government;

Cat Haven operations manager Roz Robinson said she hoped to see laws soon to stop thousands of cats and kittens being euthanised, better identify lost animals and reduce problems caused by unsterilised cats. (ref)

Local Government Minister John Castrilli said proposed State Government legislation should reduce the high proportion of stray cats in WA.

More than 5000 cats are put down by the Cat Haven each year.

Under the proposal, local governments would be required to administer and enforce compulsory cat identification through micro-chipping, as well as compulsory registration and sterilisation of cats.

It is estimated about 200,000 WA homes have cats, with millions more cats roaming feral. (ref)

Why won’t these new cat laws reduce shelter killing?

All of the initiatives (desexing, microchipping and registration) “local governments would be required to administer and enforce” are about to be turned against the “millions of cats” without owners. This won’t result in less killing, but much, much more as councils are empowered to trap every unowned cat falling foul of the new laws.

According to the Consultation Paper this new legislation, “allows for cats found in a public place or on private property to be seized and then rehomed or disposed of”. With free-roaming cats usually not suitable to live as housepets, this is a formula to expand shelter killing from a few thousand each year, into tens of thousands..

But will removing cats, lead to the elimination of street cats? According to the most current science on the topic of feral cats; the ‘Review of cat ecology and management strategies in Australia’ eradication in places that aren’t islands, or bounded by cat proof fencing is unrealistic. That is, cats can and do reproduce and reenter a non-isolated area at a rate that exceeds even the most enthusiastic trapping program.

Sending our councils out, mandating they enforce cat laws and begin trapping unowned cats, with no likely end to the trapping, it’s delusive to think this could ever result in less cats killed in pounds.

But surely, it will increase the rates of desexing?!

From the Consultation Paper;

It is acknowledged that the effectiveness of mandatory sterilisation in reducing the numbers of unwanted cats is not conclusive. Studies indicate that there are already high levels of sterilisation of owned cats at around 90%. Research undertaken for the WA Cats Advisory Committee indicated that 88% of domestic cats were sterilised.

Research also indicates that the high levels of sterilisation in owned cats exceeds the rate calculated for zero population growth, which is consistent with a national survey which found a steady decline in the number of owned cats.

The majority of owned cats are desexed in WA. Those that aren’t desexed are living in some of the poorest suburbs of perth, meaning that support services are required not new laws and fines.

Compulsory desexing laws expend resources rounding up and killing animals. Those same resources can and should be spent desexing animals for people who many not be able to do so themselves. The cost of seizing, holding, killing and disposing of a cat because their owner has not desexed it could cover the cost of sterilising the pet, plus others.

If this were really about bringing down shelter kill rates we have to help, not blame

Other countries that are bringing their shelter kill rates down, have done so not with mandatory desexing (there is no example in the world which has shown mandatory desexing to have brought down shelter kill rates, in fact major animal welfare groups in the US no longer support it).

But there are things that have been shown to bring down shelter kill rates and stabilise free-roaming cat populations.

If this were really about reducing killing;

- Animal rescue groups would lobby government to support the development of a community vet program. Councils would offer any person on a pension free cat desexing vouchers, along with a program for semi-cat owners and colony carers.

- Rather than invest in expanding each councils pound facilities to be able to process cats, cat welfare groups would be lobbying for protection to all free-roaming cats. If a cat is found to be feral and unsuitable for rehoming, then it should be desexed and returned to where it was collected. ‘Barn cat’ adoptions can help people adopt outside cats.

- Education campaigns should move away from ‘Who’s for Cats’ style promoting impoundment and towards promoting awareness of semi-owned cats, support for community cat carers and awareness of council desexing resources.

Reducing shelter killing is about reducing intakes

To reduce the number of animals killed in our shelters, we must minimise the numbers we take in. We don’t do this by creating mandatory desexing laws that invent more reasons for cats to be impounded, or for them to be seized from owners who can’t afford to desex, or from those who care for community cats. Mandatory desexing only increases impoundments, and therefore shelter killing.

Programs which reduce shelter killing, help the community with affordable, accessible pet desexing. These programs are cheaper than a law because law enforcement is really, really expensive. They’re more effective than a law because everyone is willingly involved, rather than being accused, persecuted or having their pet removed. They’re better for cats, because despite what many would have you believe, a healthy cat, is NOT better off dead than semi-owned and cared for by the community.

Reactionary laws, which treat the public as a enemy that needs to be coerced and punished simply build barriers between animal groups and the very community we need to help us manage and care for our community cats.

Australian’s have a very unique relationship with the law. Anyone whose travelled overseas, where there is often a ‘if you don’t bother me, I won’t bother you’ ideology, will have noticed the Aussie preference to legislate against every possibility. When someone presents yet another law addressing yet another issue, it’s the Australian way to think more is better. A law to right some wrong can’t be a bad thing, right?

But you only have to watch an evening current affairs show to see the conflict this brings in our personal lives. We demand more enforcement of road rules and higher penalties for people who drive dangerously, but think that a speed camera on our street is simply revenue raising. We call for police sweeps of nightclub areas and tough action against street drinkers, but feel wronged if we can’t have a beer on the foreshore on Australia Day, or get busted at a family park barbecue. We want strict laws against dog owners who in our eyes seem to be doing the ‘wrong thing’, but get huffy when they start to encroach on our right to have our dogs in public places or when our local off-leash park becomes leashed only.

We imagine that laws will only target the bad people. That laws are only designed to get the bad people who might hurt us now or in the future. And as we know that we’re not bad people we don’t think for a moment laws targeting bad people will effect us personally. The truth is that they undeniably do.

Every single advocacy group lobbying for every single kind of law in Australia has one thing in common. We all think ‘our’ chosen law is more pure, more worthy and more necessary than all the others. Unfortunately, the usual result of these well-intentioned drives is just another sporadically enforced piece of legislation that does little to improve the situation for anyone involved.

I’ve often blogged about the Calgary model, because I just think these guys have it so, so right. Rather than look to create extensive legislation targeting owners and building resentment in the community when good owners find themselves effected by some unrealised side effect of the law’s implementation, they have partnered with their community to realise voluntary compliance in responsible pet ownership.

Key to Calgary’s success

• no – mandatory spay/neuter
• no – breed specific legislation
• no – pet limit laws
• no – anti-tethering laws
• yes – providing valued services rather than simply punishing citizens into compliance
• yes – buy in and cooperation among community stakeholders thanks to an animal control director who is a professional mediator
• yes – extensive education and PR campaign to emphasize responsible pet ownership
• yes – low license fees and modest fee differential for intact pets

Bill Bruce, as the Director of Animal Services and Bylaws in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, took over a struggling program. He has had remarkable success, developing a program which now boasts a licensing compliance rate for dogs of 91%, a return to owner rate of 85% and a euthanasia rate of only 6%. A newly implemented licensing program for cats already has a licensing compliance rate of 54%, a return to owner rate of 56% and only an 18% euthanasia rate. A majority of those animals being humanely destroyed are for behavioral issues and poor health or injuries. Aggressive animal incidents are almost non-existent. With a population base of over 1 million people, those are staggering statistics. In addition, Calgary has no limit laws, no breed specific laws, no mandatory spay/neuter ordinances and no interference from animals rights groups.

Calgary’s phenomenal success depends on a sense of trust among pet owners that they will be treated fairly by and obtain good services from Calgary Animal Services. Trust makes for unprecedented high licensing compliance. High licensing compliance means that the taxpayers do not foot the bill for animal services, and it means that nearly all stray pets are quickly reunited with their owners which saves lives and keeps costs low.

There is no way to achieve this kind of licensing compliance in an environment where citizens feel they must hide their dogs and cats from pet limit laws, BSL, crushing differential licensing fees, or mandatory spay/neuter laws. Without the high licensing compliance, none of the rest of the success could have happened. – ‘Save our Dogs: Successes’

Calgary’s experience shows what happens when the community is engaged as a stakeholder on community safety and animal welfare. Reactionary laws, which treat the public as a enemy that needs to be coerced and punished simply build barriers between shelters and the very community they need to help them achieve their No Kill goals.

Animal welfare groups in Queensland were today celebrating Gold Coast City Council’s rollout of their breeder permit scheme.

It even got an editorial from the Gold Coast Bulletin;

The move to introduce the desexing of cats and dogs on the Gold Coast ‘by stealth’ is a law to be applauded.

Critics of the Gold Coast City Council’s proposed change to require pet owners to have a licence to breed from their animals say it is a sneaky way to introduce mandatory desexing and that it will mean more costs. So be it.

The sad fact is that each year hundreds of unwanted cats and dogs are put down on the Coast — last year more than 1400 were destroyed.

So while the council has given in, to pressure of animal welfare groups who have determined that an animal with reproductive organs is a threat worthy of the strongest legislative direction;

We commend the Gold Coast City Council on this initiative and trust that once passed, the policing of the law’s requirements will be carried out with vigilance.

This law will be a toothless tiger without those who flaunt it being prosecuted.

What are the facts behind the emotion?

According to the latest available figures, the Gold Coast City Council has 55,000 registered cats and 55,000 registered dogs. That’s 110,000 owned pets.

The “1,400 pets destroyed” quoted in the editorial is just 1.2% of the pet population being killed in shelters. In a state where ‘pit bulls’ can’t be rehomed. And feral cats can’t be released.

Will this expensive initiative (how expensive? well the 2008 trial cost $380,000), bring down this number? Likely not much.

But it will certainly allow the Gold Coast Council more powers to seize the pets of disadvantaged owners if they can’t afford desexing, and the unrestricted ability to seize unowned and semi-owned cats… driving up intakes and shelter killing…

…. hang on…

See also: Gold Coast City Council drives Australia’s largest dog cull

I’ve been asked by the Cat Protection Society to review the document that’s driving a lot of the cat welfare law changes in Victoria.

The document ‘The Cat Crisis Coalition – who are we, what do we want and why‘ is used as a handout for councils and the public to show just exactly why legislation should be enacted that require all cats over the age of 12 weeks to be desexed and that all cats and kittens are desexed before sale.

Remembering that 10,000 word documents about cat welfare are as about as interesting as navel lint to the public and the politicians who need to read them, I’m pleased to have the opportunity to break down into layman’s terms the claims of this paper.

Lets start with their first idea:

irresponsible cat owners are causing ‘cat overpopulation’.

No one can deny we have a cat breeding problem in Australia. We certainly have a shelter overpopulation problem. But as Kersti Seksel said so eloquently at a recent cat welfare conference;

There’s no evidence that owned cats replenish the unowned population. It is more likely that the net movement is in the other direction, due to the differential desexing rates – in fact we’re getting them moving from the unowned, into the owned population.

The reproductive rates of owned cats are capped by very high rates of desexing, leading to the population of owned cats being in negative growth (less cats are born than die each year). In fact, according to the Pet Information and Advisory Service:

The number of owned cats in Australia has been in steady decline for 20 years.

Outgoing, affable, friendly pet cats, raised indoors are still a desirable commodity. To make up for a lack of available animals, some of the cats born to unowned parents are moving into the owned populations. Think the rescuer who rehabilitates feral babies, or the person who shelters a pregnant stray, then socialises, advertises and rehomed the kittens.

This is supported by a recent study of Victorian vets which showed of the owned cat population, those few who did have litters were quickly absorbed by the cat owning public;

Very few litters were presented at the participating clinics. Most of the progeny of these owned animals were rehomed directly by their owner in some way. Very few were taken to shelters. This suggests that the progeny of veterinary clients are not contributing significantly to shelter admissions.

So while there are still bucketloads of kittens arriving in shelters each year, these are from the self-sustaining, unowned population. If we could finally do away with the notion that owned cats are causing cat overpopulation, that would be gr8t. tnx bye.

compulsory desexing is needed to make owners more responsible

The group uses the following example to back up their claims that the public are ‘irresponsible’:

DAMIC Benchmarking Survey – found just 41% of estimated 616,000 owned cats were registered.

But what they neglect to mention is that the same report noted the reason for the low rate of registration was likely due to “the existence of a semi-owned cat population”. They count semi-owned cats in these figures, skewing the results.

So would compulsory desexing make people adopt and desex their neighbourhood moggies? No matter how much we’d like to convert semi-owned cats into owned cats, the experience of the Who’s for Cats? campaign has shown it’s not as easy as just ‘applying pressure’.

From a survey in response to their campaign asking people to adopt their semi-owned;

The majority of respondents thought the campaign would be effective in raising awareness about the stray cat problem, and were considering taking action in response to the campaign messages. Most people thought they might take the stray to a pound or shelter, as opposed to taking full ownership of the cat. This finding is consistent with the experiences of animal shelters participating in the campaign, which have found more people are surrendering rather than taking ownership of stray cats.

While again, the survey of Victorian vets shows that people who genuinely own their animals, do in fact already desex their pets;

Overall, the level of desexing was high, with a greater percentage of cats (94%) being desexed than dogs (89.7%).

In conclusion: owned cats are already desexed and approaches which target semi-owned cats lead to increased impoundments. Compulsory desexing won’t just fail to effect the owned population, it will increase shelter killing.

Desexing must be compulsory – voluntary programs have been in place now since 1996 and they have not worked.

If you can show me a high volume, free (or even low cost) desexing program in Victoria, which allows communities to desex their neighbourhood cats without someone needing to become the owner of each one, I’ll eat my hat. In fact, if you can show me a high volume, low cost desexing program in Victoria of any kind at all, I’ll make it my personal life’s mission to make it the most well promoted program in Australia.

Sadly, it’s not the case. Voluntary desexing has not worked, because no one has supported bringing cheap and free pet desexing to the masses. This group is looking to skip ahead to impoundment and punishment, rather than taking that first step of offering the disadvantaged in the community resources to comply. With studies showing the greatest barrier to pet desexing is simply cost, we would do well to stop allowing these groups to write off supporting the community as a solution, before it’s even been tried.

And finally

Compulsory desexing will tighten the supply – studies from the USA have shown its success in reducing the numbers of cats entering shelters.

Again, I call balderdash! We’ve seen examples in San Mateo County, California in 1991 where the introduction of compulsory desexing saw cat deaths in shelters increase 86%.

In the city of Los Angeles where they passed one of the most draconian mandatory spay/neuter laws in America (requiring virtually every dog and cat in the city to be sterilized by the age of 4 months), they saw their kill numbers go up 31%, after more than five years of steady decline in shelter killing.

While the national ASPCA weighs in saying:

The ASPCA is not aware of any credible evidence demonstrating a statistically significant enhancement in the reduction of shelter intake or euthanasia as a result of the implementation of a mandatory spay/neuter law.

Yeah. No.

The solution isn’t this complicated. Really.

To reduce the number of animals killed in our shelters, we must minimise the numbers we take in. We don’t do this by creating mandatory desexing laws that invent more reasons for cats to be impounded, or for them to be seized from owners who can’t afford to desex, or from those who care for community cats. Mandatory desexing only increases impoundments, and therefore shelter killing.

Programs which reduce shelter killing, help the community with affordable, accessible pet desexing. These programs are cheaper than a law because law enforcement is really, really expensive. They’re more effective than a law because everyone is willingly involved, rather than being accused, persecuted or having their pet removed. They’re better for cats, because despite what many would have you believe, a healthy cat, is NOT better off dead than semi-owned and cared for by the community.

So to Victoria’s mandatory desexing zealots, The Cat Crisis Coalition, I say phooey.

Stop judging, impounding and killing, and start serving your community.

Why mandatory desexing fails to save the lives of pets;

In her article, Davis wrote, “On February 12, 2008, The City Council of Los Angeles passed a law that requires all cats and dogs in the city be spayed or neutered (desexed) after the age of 4 months (with some exceptions).” Unfortunately, Davis failed to present the kill data in Los Angeles shelters from before and after the time that law went into effect.

Beginning in 2001 the numbers of dogs entering shelters in L.A. and the numbers of them killed dropped every year until 2008 when the law was passed.

In 2001 40,442 dogs entered shelters in LA. 22,675 of them were killed. By 2007 canine deaths in L.A. shelters had plummeted to 6,038 – still too many, but a dramatic improvement.

In 2008, immediately following the mandatory spay/neuter law, dog deaths in L.A. shelters increased for the first time in 7 years. They increased by 24% from 6,038 in 2007 to 7,514. They rose again in 2009, erasing virtually all of the progress that had been made in the two years prior to the law.

The explanation for this is actually pretty simple: spay/neuter laws expend resources rounding up and killing animals. Those same resources can and should be spent spaying or neutering animals for people who many not be able to do so themselves.

The cost of seizing, holding, killing and disposing of an animal because their owner has not neutered it could cover the cost of sterilizing the pet, plus others.

Furthermore, spay/neuter laws place more authority in the hands of people like Los Angeles Animal Control and justify the catching and killing of more animals.

Read the rest of the article here…

The RSPCA is seeking submissions to its discussion paper on ‘Puppy Farms’;

Puppy breeding establishments take many forms and can be seen to be on a continuum from extremely bad (puppy farms, exploitative hoarders) through to excellent (dog enthusiasts who put the animal’s health and welfare as the first priority). This paper focuses on the problems associated with the lower end of this continuum: puppy farms.

But while it claims to be targeting just the baddies it asks, should “all breeders be required to obtain a government licence to breed dogs – whether they are breeding purebred, cross-bred or mixed-bred dogs, and whether they breed commercially or as a hobby?”

Meanwhile in Queensland;

Gold Coast pet owners will need a licence if they want their dog or cat to have a litter, under proposed new regulations slammed by pet shop owners as ‘mandatory desexing by stealth’.

The City Council intends to introduce permits to target backyard breeders and cut the number of unwanted kittens and puppies.

The State Government-backed pilot program could be adopted statewide.

So should we have a permit system for breeders to eliminate puppy farmers and backyard breeders?

As always, it’s not as simple as it sounds.

A person who treats dogs appallingly, neglects them, lets them live in covered in shit, overbreeds and finally kills them without vet assistance – is already breaking the law. So by that definition the evil abusive puppy farms we all hear about are perfectly able to be prosecuted under existing animal welfare legislation. A permit system neither adds to nor subtracts from these powers from a welfare perspective.

Whereas someone who has an clean, regularly inspected bulk kennels, with all the required permits, hundreds of breeding dogs and absolutely no regard for where their pups end up – can never be eliminated, unless we decide as a community that treating pets as livestock is unacceptable and stop buying.

Like it or not, in Australia it’s ok to use animals for human use. People who farm dogs, are able to claim the same rights as any other farmer. Licencing schemes can’t and won’t change that.

Surely a permit system would help reduce the number of BYB though?

Think about it.

We’ve seen that overwhelmingly, the owned population of cats are desexed. Luckily (or unluckily) for cat-kind, there is very little money in kittens; when a shelter can’t move an animal, desexed and vaccinated for $100 and free kittens are coming out everyone’s ears, why would anyone breed their cat?

Certainly, dogs are different. There is, in all theory, value in puppies.

But is there puppy overpopulation? We know there’s kitten overpopulation as kittens die in shelters by the hundreds each day.  But puppies are continuing to sell; they get adopted from shelters, they’re sold in pet shops, they fill newspaper classifieds each and every weekend. It seems there’s no shortage of people who want to buy puppies.

So the problem isn’t too many puppies. What is it?

Animal welfare groups like to say ‘there’s too many puppies; dogs are abandoned because they’re easily replaced’; which is frankly oversimplifying the issue for dramatic effect.

The truth is more like ‘there’s exactly as many puppies as the public will consume; dogs are abandoned because people have unrealistic expectations of pet ownership, they don’t know how or where to seek help for dog behaviour problems, they are inherently more lazy than they think they are, they choose the wrong type of dog, they have transient, busy lives which mean they genuinely don’t know where they’ll be in 10 years, they can’t find accommodation, their relationships fail, they get sick, they lose their jobs and sometimes…. they are just simply crap.’

None of which has anything to do with there being too many puppies.

A permit system for breeders is an expensive navel gazing exercise that will do nothing to help pets or pet owners, but will tie up valuable resources in its administration. Puppy farming ain’t illegal. No permit system in the world is going to benefit the animals of an industry that trades, with the communities support, on the emotional misery of companion animals. Hobbiests who breed from home, despite popular opinion, are only contributing to the market exactly the number of animals that that market will bear.

So if the benefits are limited, what’s the cost?

Rolling out a permit system incorporating everyone from large-scale puppy farmers, right down to the individual breeding in their loungeroom has a huge and very real cost to our animal management system.

Imagine for one moment, everyone that kept household chickens were treated in the same manner as someone who had thousands and produced supermarket eggs for a living. Licensing, reporting, legislation, enforcement; what would that even cost?

And could we be using this money in a way that was more beneficial to the community, like a large scale education program on how to choose a great dog? Or outreach desexing for pets of at risk communities? Maybe programs that make it easier to be a pet owner like off-leash parks or free in-home dog training for owners who have pet issues? You know, things that keep owned pets safe.

Again by taking an adversarial and draconian approach to managing pets, animal welfare groups have missed the point on why the community desire so strongly to have and keep pets in their lives. By steadfastly targeting the ‘greedy evil breeders’ they’re slowly forcing us into a future of absurd and emotive ’solutions’ that, in the long term do little to target the true causes of pet homelessness.

It’s only when we stop with the ‘our way or the highway’ approach, can we start using our powers for what they should truly be used for – support services which help and coach pet lovers to make good decisions for the whole of their pet’s life.

If you’ve ever tried to engage a mandatory desexing zealot in a reasonable discussion of the population dynamics of cats in Australia, you’ll know the meaning of pointless. They are driven to show the world that everyone else is wrong, that the public is evil and the only path to salvation is the legislated removal of the reproductive organs of every owned animal.

No matter how. much. evidence. you are able to present on just where stray cats come from – they consider their methodology unquestionable; “of course it will work, you silly person,” they chant. “more desexed cats mean less kittens born and less have to be killed in shelters!“. All animal lovers must join them in their fight to target the ‘irresponsible masses’.

But ‘punishment dogmatists’ choose to ignore a truth, that those who study pets and their owners are able to measure time and time again; Australian pet owners are incredibly compliant and compassionate towards companion animals.

Last year, a report for the Victorian Bureau of Animal Welfare, by The Animal Welfare Science Centre, sampled Victorian veterinarians and their clients profiling owners, pets and ownership practices, especially in how they manage the reproductive behaviour of their pets. ‘Characteristics of pets who visit veterinarians’ (Martson, Bennett), interviewed 51 veterinarian surgeries and 588 owners and found the majority of pet owners are doing what we asked them to;

Overall, the level of desexing was high, with a greater percentage of cats (94%) being desexed than dogs (89.7%).

And that they are also remarkably considerate to those cats that they don’t own;

37.9% of the sample fed cats that they did not own (cat semi owners), indicating not only that responsible cat owners engage in this behaviour, but that they may do so at a greater level than the general population.

Despite what is commonly claimed, the small number of owned cat litters that happen ‘accidentally’ aren’t abandoned, but are considerately placed;

Very few litters were presented at the participating clinics. Most of the progeny of these owned animals were rehomed directly by their owner in some way. Very few were taken to shelters. This suggests that the progeny of veterinary clients are not contributing significantly to shelter admissions.

47.7% of cats were obtained at no cost, from the stray population, from friends, relatives and neighbours.

Cats acquired at no cost were likely to be owned for as long as those that had been acquired at considerable cost.

Meaning cat owners are not only not contributing to the ‘kitten flood’ but are actually pretty efficiently absorbing cats from the unowned population by adopting neighbourhood strays. They are helping, not hindering cat welfare in Australia.

Rather than legislation targeting owners, the study pointed towards targeted desexing programs as the key to reducing strays and ferals;

Rural and regional practices saw significantly more unowned, feral cats compared to urban practices. Lower client income levels were associated with a higher percentage of feral cats being presented at clinics which suggests that providing low cost/no cost desexing in low income areas might be effective in reducing feral cat numbers.

As most of the cats which enter shelters as strays display some evidence of having been socialised to humans, it is likely that many of them are semi-owned cats. Increasing the proportion of cat semi-owners who desex the animals they feed therefore could reduce shelter admissions.

Outreach, not criticism. Support and assistance, not fire and brimstone. It’s only when animal welfare groups stop taking a ‘moral high ground’ with cat owners and start working with them as partners will there be any hope to reduce cat problems here in Australia.

While ‘mandatory desexing’ targeting owners sounds constructive; what is suggested by this study is that, like many other previous studies, cat owners are the solution, not the problem when it comes to caring for cats. And since their compassion extends to the stray and ferals in their community, if we engage them and simply ask for their help we can start to reduce the flow of cats and kittens into shelters.

Cat owners are our allies, not our enemies.

See also: Last of 300 strong managed cat colony dies

One of the most frequently used measures of the success of suburbs and cities is the is the income earning capacity of its residents. Basically, a good income can provide a ‘buffer’ against natural, societal or personal disaster and determine a communities capacity to cope with adversity. Without this buffer, there can be a dangerously fine line for individuals to cross into loss of health, loss of income, mental health problems or poverty.

So what do you call a law that is used to target these vulnerable and disadvantaged people? One that effects those people living in poorer suburbs exponentially more, because they are overrepresented as to be breaking the law?

Discrimination.

The WA government is calling for new cat legislation, requiring cat owners to desex their pets. They’re doing this because the local Cat Haven is swamped with cats;

The eastern Perth suburb of Cannington reported nearly twice the number of dumped cats and kittens in the peak month of December than the next worst performing suburb of Willagee.

According to statistics collected by the Cat Haven, 63 felines were dumped in Cannington, 32 in the southern suburb of Willagee, and 31 in the northern suburb of Balga.

In December, the Cat Haven was inundated with almost 1000 unwanted felines during the biggest cat dumping period of the year.

Cat dumping rife in Perth’s eastern suburbs

But to put these ‘eastern suburbs’ in context, they are some of the poorest suburbs in Perth. According to REIWA real estate profiles WA,, the mentioned suburbs had the following median weekly household income;

Cannington ($794)
Willagee ($750)
Balga ($644)

For comparison, the Perth median weekly household income is $1,086, and my own suburb, a relatively average place, is $1,235 (Karrinyup). While a ‘exclusive’ suburb like Subiaco is $1,502.

Comparing the major sources of cats, with the communities they are coming from, it’s obvious that this is a law that primarily targets the poor and disadvantaged; pensioners, low income families and people with mental or physical health issues.

What’s more, studies have shown the primary reason people don’t desex their pets is cost. To target poor owners with legislation, does little to help them afford the surgery.

A study conducted by Harris Interactive for Alley Cat Allies came up with some interesting data. To start with, nearly all pets cats in America — more than 80 percent — are already desexed (note for Australians: studies here have shown we Aussies are up around 95% of owned cats being desexed). And the ones that aren’t didn’t have the misfortune of being owned by deadbeat, idiotic, irresponsible or callous people. No, they’re owned by poor people.

In fact, the single most influential predictor of whether or not a cat is altered is the income level of his or her owner.

Eighty percent of cats in U.S. households are neutered, according to a new, nationally representative study conducted by Alley Cat Allies and published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Association, a leading peer-reviewed scientific journal.

The study, “Population characteristics and neuter status of cats living in households in the United States,” found that family income was the single strongest predictor of whether pet cats living in households are neutered. Over 90% of cats in households earning $35,000 or more per year were neutered, compared to 51% of cats in households earning less than $35,000.

As the study points out, it’s not pet cats (the only ones who would be affected by a mandatory desexing law) who aren’t being altered; it’s unowned strays. And cats represent the largest group of animals being killed in shelters.

It’s worth noting there is no large scale, low cost cat desexing program in WA.

Identifying these sections of society, and offering extra support from government to ensure the populations basic needs are met are always going to have more success than just slapping a new law on a section of the community already struggling with hardship. If we really wanted to cut down on shelter deaths, how about looking to funding targeted desexing Community Cat programs and mandatory assistance to low income pet owners.

If that doesn’t work THEN get giddy with legislation. Chances are it won’t be needed. But don’t put the cart before the horse by bringing in legislation, before enacting the community support to ensure that the poor aren’t targeted and their pets seized and killed for a lack of personal resources.

Thanks to Margaret for the tip!

With the now irrefutable evidence that it’s the unowned cat population that is the major cause of cat shelter overpopulation, and the growing failure of mandatory desexing to reduce shelter kill rates as promised, mandatory desexing advocates are on the hunt for another ‘good reason’ to be allowed to have the legislation they so desire.

So they’ve made up another theoretical benefit;

According to Canobolas Family Pet Hospital veterinarian Geoff Freeth, brawling undesexed cats help spread diseases such as feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), the cat equivalent of human AIDS.

“The incidences of FIV sits at around 15 to 20 per cent in Australia, although there are places such as Goulburn where 30 per cent of cats have FIV so it’s impossible to know how many local cats have the disease,” he said.

“The majority of people see it as the responsible thing to get their cats desexed, however there is a small percentage of people who don’t do it because they’re lazy or lack education (on the issue).”

Dr Freeth says feral cats are also an increasing problem in the region and while desexing won’t have an immediate impact on feral cat numbers, he believes there will be long-term benefits.

Mandatory desexing purr-fect – Central Western Daily

I really don’t understand how the straw man argument that cat owners are to blame for ongoing feral cat problems continues to be given credence. Of course there are health and behavioural benefits to cats if they are desexed; that was never under debate. But oversimplifying the issue by suggesting that targeting ‘lazy and uneducated owners’ is the key to curing all of the ills of cat kind, is just so, so unhelpful, keeping the public all looking to the government for a legislative solution, rather than empowering them to take genuine action that would reduce the number of homeless cats.

We need to stop all these efforts to ‘get’ owners. And start real discussion about how we can ‘get’ some solutions to the actual problem – a large population of breeding, unowned animals.