Kersti Seksel on scientific cat management; using our heads AND our hearts

A gem from Dr Kersti Seksel at the Cat Alliance of Australia’s yearly symposium – as always astoundingly fascinating and genuinely entertaining:

At the end is the full video, but here are some snippets of goodness:

Mandatory cat desexing

We talk about cat overpopulation, I think that’s a misnomer. It’s shelter overpopulation. I’ll show you some figures that show there is no pet overpopulation in Australia at all. But while we figure on that pet overpopulation we’re not going to be getting to the bottom of where the problem really is.

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There is a need to reduce the number of unwanted, stray and feral cats. Everybody agrees with that. However on the surface there seems like an obvious solution. Make it compulsory for every cat to be desexed, prior to reaching breeding age. From the surface that looks like the obvious solution to the problem. But it’s just not that simple.

It’s the unowned cat population that is the problem, and compulsory desexing will do nothing to reduce the unowned cats in our community. Because if you don’t own them, who’s going to take them to the vet to get them desexed?

But what it will do is increase the cost of animal management and local government. And its going to increase non-compliance in areas such as licencing and microchipping and vaccination. And this has been shown by lots of studies overseas.

If we want to look after the welfare of the cat, we have to look at it from all perspectives.

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So lets look at the facts;

– Owned cats are not the problem – the vast majority of owned cats, well over 90% are desexed and are a valued part of the household. Voluntary desexing of owned cats is occurring at rates which cause 0% population growth within these groups of animals.

– 95% of owned cats and dogs never enter the animal welfare system – they never go to shelters.

– 79% of cats entering three of Victoria’s largest shelters were unowned. Studies in Victoria and Queensland suggest that owner relinquished cats represent less than 20% of all cat admissions to shelters. And that 80% of cats entering shelters had never had an owner.

– Statistics gathered in counties in the USA, show when mandatory desexing has been introduced there has been a decline in compliance with pet licencing requirements of up to 50%. There has also been an increase in animal management costs of 56% against a revenue increase of only 43% and as a result, some counties have repealled their mandatory desexing legislation because it wasn’t going where they wanted it to go.

– In 2001 the ACT government made it compulsory for all cats and dogs to be desexed by 6 months of age. Statistics have been collated for the five years prior to 2001, and six years since, and they show there has been no positive impact from the introduction of compulsory desexing. And the sad thing is, significantly more cats were euthanased in 2006, than in 2001, when compulsory desexing was introduced.

– The unowned cat population is self-sustaining, because very few are desexed. So no matter what we do about the owned population, the unowned population will just keep on doing what they’re doing.

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Compulsory legislation from a scientific perspective is flawed.

The solution is multifaceted and it really must include several things. Targeting the stray and feral cat population with new programs which are acceptable to the community and effective in reducing overall numbers is the number one thing we should be doing.

The owned cat population is being capped by very high rates of desexing. We know the owned cat population has been in decline for the last 20 years. Non-owned cats are a self-sustaining population, the rates of desexing are extremely low.

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.

Mandatory desexing has been unsuccessful as a method to reduce shelter euthanasia.

If you are interested in an educated approach to cat management, then I can’t recommend this video enough!