It makes me sad that we’ve turned animals advocates into cat killing apologists

Hi there, I read with disappointment your feature on “Aussie Working Cats”. While I appreciate that not all cats are suited to an indoor only lifestyle, I think it’s important to move away from the attitude that cats can be used as a method of “chemical free pest control”. Shelters and animal rescue groups advocate (and rightly so) for cats to be kept indoors at night and (though not required by law) that cats are kept in a safe outdoor area during the day. Cats that are free to roam outdoors generally have shorter life spans than indoor cats as they are at risk of getting into fights with other cats, getting hit by cars, or suffering the cruelty of human beings. While I was pleased to read that you advocate the desexing of cats, I don’t think that advertising the “Aussie working cat” is responsible. Encouraging people to use cats as a method of pest control rather than seeing them as a family animal companion sends an incorrect message to pet owners – we need to encourage people to be responsible pet owners and re educate people that animals are companions, not objects that are there for our use as we see fit.

Aussie Working Cats is a promotion we’re doing at PetRescue to encourage people to open their minds to what an ‘ideal’ home is for a cat. If a cat has a safe, warm, protected shelter and an owner looking out for their welfare, then by all reasonable criteria this is an ideal home for a cat.

“The modern Aussie Working Cat is responsibly owned and desexed. They are the cats who are too shy to live indoors with a family, or who have never learned to be a house pet, but are otherwise happy and healthy. They’re a valuable asset to their workplace and all they ask of their owners is to meet a few simple needs…”

Contrary to the notion that every outdoor cat is ‘suffering’, we know that with the right support from a compassionate community, these cats can live long, healthy lives. They are loved and respected for who they are – even if they’re not ‘pets’ – and their people offer them the ability to keep right on living and doing their thing.

Is it a risk free home? Of course not. Any animal that spends any time outdoors is at risk. But we’d no more recommend that every animal live in a zoo, than those same outdoors animal be killed – so it is beyond comprehension that we’d advocate this for otherwise healthy cats.

The Aussie Working Cats promotion follows on from our campaign last year ‘The Secret Cat Society’ which looked to offer alternatives to impoundment at a kill-shelters for an untame strays. Both of these initiatives look to improve people’s perception of outdoor living cats. How bizarre then, that the major criticisms from this cat lover is that these kinds of campaigns actually harm cats?

‘Better off dead’ – alive and well

What have we done to our cat advocates over the last few decades that has turned them from celebrating and desiring to protect ALL cats, to only championing the welfare of a tiny segment of the cat population – the happily owned, indoor only cat? Surely, the one cat that needs the least in the way of support, as it already living what could only be considered a charmed life!

Being killed after impoundment is a very real hazard for an untame cat. What the kill-apologists fail to acknowledge when they purport that ‘the only good home is an indoor home’, is that this isn’t a realistic option for the very large number of untame, unsocialised cats entering shelters. The ultimate betrayal of these otherwise healthy animals, is to advocate that because they can’t secure the perfect, risk free home, that the only option they should be offered is impoundment and – given most shelters have a 100% kill rate for untame cats – death.

Death at the hands of a shelter, doesn’t seem to factor at all into measuring the ‘risk’ a particular cat may face. Being hit by a car or having a fight is given much more weighting than a shelter almost certainly ending their life.

Current Australian studies show 80% of cats entering shelters have never had owners. They are the untame offspring of untame, unowned adults. The cat population is self-sustaining – that is, even if every owned cat was desexed tomorrow, it would make no impact on this population.

Whether it be a ‘Working Cat’, ‘Community Cat’ or untame stray, then if we desire to move beyond high-volume killing of cats… then we have to move beyond killing being the only solution for all but a choice group of cats. We can’t keep promoting the ‘indoor only’ cat – condemning all other kinds of homes – and expect the situation to change. We can’t keep feeding our cat advocates on a diet of ‘killing is kindness’, then wonder why the killing doesn’t end.

I’m glad this lady wrote to me as it gave me the chance to embrace her love of cats, and ask that she start thinking outside the box with her cat advocacy. If she’s keen enough to write me a letter and repeat the mantras of her beloved cat ‘welfare’ organisations, maybe she loves cats enough to want to work on solutions that would actually save their lives.

Unfortunately however, all the while being killed in shelter is promoted as a preferred outcome, to an imperfect life outdoors by our major animal welfare organsations, cat advocates will continue to be unwittingly supporting the wholesale slaughter of the animals they love. No amount of hand-wringing or donation driving will stop the killing.

The killing won’t end until we do something differently.