RSPCA NSW ~ “Help us kill 500,000 cats”

The RSPCA NSW has a problem – between the months of September to April, their pounds fill to bursting with the offspring of the unowned cat population.

So enormous is this problem that of the 20,703 cats admitted to RSPCA NSW shelters, 13,031 (about 65%) we’re killed.

Of these cats, 80% were killed for being ‘infectious’ (ringworm, cat flu), or for ‘medical reasons’ (being too young or too old, having an injury), while the remainder were killed for ‘behavioural reasons’ (being untame). Suggesting that your average ‘street’ cat has more chance of winning gold in the synchronised swimming than it does of getting out their shelters alive as someone’s new pet. It’s a no-brainer that untame, unowned cats have a near universal 100% kill rate if impounded.

There is only one thing for the RSPCA to do in this situation, obviously… ask the community to act in a ‘vigilante’ fashion and bring them in and allow them to impound even more unowned, community cats;

RSPCA spokesman Dr Norm Blackman said stray and semi-feral cats were the main source of kittens dumped at shelters, which led to higher euthanasia rates.

“Population control is very difficult and to be effective it will require substantial commitment and resources,” Dr Blackman said.

“People living in residential areas where there are community cats should consider taking responsibility by catching them and taking them to a shelter where they can be desexed and re-homed.

“That way they won’t become a source of more stray kittens next breeding season.”

Well, no those cats won’t, because they’ll be dead. OTHER cats will be the source of next year’s kittens, as that’s exactly how this catch-and-kill thing works.

But certainly, if the public was to bring in the estimated 500,000 cats living in urban NSW to the RSPCA for ‘rehoming’, and that was to take place over a few short months (before the population re-established), and then urban NSW was to build a fence around itself to stop semi-rural cats from moving in to these now vacant habitats, AND then NSW was to build a trench which kept the cats from other states migrating across the border… then yup, less cats would be entering RSPCA NSW shelters.

That seems implausible?

That’s because it is.

We cannot kill our way, to not killing cats. Even if the RSPCA killed the 500,000 unowned, untame, urban community cats tomorrow (which is essentially what they’re promoting), without some way to ensure the cats simply don’t repopulate, this killing will need to go on forever.

But surely the RSPCA is more scientific than that? They must have thought this through?

Well, yes. But recognising that the annual cat breeding cycle has more to do with nature, than ‘irresponsible people’, doesn’t fit within their mission to blame the community for its animal issues. The article continues;

Every year, thousands of cats are euthanised at shelters across NSW – a figure animal welfare groups said peaked in the months after Christmas when cute and cuddly presents became unwanted pets.

So even when they’ve just explained that hundreds of thousands of unowned cats are breeding unchecked, they still grasp at the now defunct straw which is ‘unwanted christmas presents’.

Talk about hearing hoof beats and thinking the endangered Philippine Spotted Deer, because the zebras were waterskiing that day.

So what SHOULD the RSPCA be recommending then smarty-pants?

It’s not that hard. The idea that ‘vigilantes’ should take action is actually pretty solid. Communities can fix the problem of cat overpopulation in shelters. However, the key is to keep cats OUT of shelters, not encourage their impoundment (and likely death).

As we’ve seen with the Who’s for Cats program, encouraging people to trap cats and bring them to the shelter for ‘rehoming’ does little but cause killing to skyrocket. Shelters simply don’t have homes available for untame cats.

But if shelters were willing to desex the cats of any community cat caretakers, or were to themselves arrange the desex and return of cats from known cat population ‘hotspots’, the the problem of shelter killing is well on the way to being solved.

There’s an awful lot of science and case studies to support this approach as the only humane way to manage the unowned cat population.

Unfortunately, until the RSPCA abandons its policy of scolding the public and using killing as the primary tool for managing the unowned cat population, we’re doomed to see the killing continue.

Do you want to stop the tragic deaths of shelter cats, and cut your shelter’s cat intake dramatically and almost overnight?

Maddies Fund – Shelter Crowd Control: Keeping Community Cats Out of Shelters