(WA) Cats, cats everywhere!!

The big news this week in WA is cats. An estimated 7,000 are killed each year in the state, with Shenton Park Cat Haven forced to put down 80 a day during the warm months and the RSPCA taking in over 700 cats last financial year (with this being a 49% increase on the year before).

Despite this, the government has said no to state enforced compulsory cat sterlisation. According to Local Government Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich in the West Australian (Thursday 17 Jan), “In a state that is geographically and environmentally diverse, it is considered more effective for policy decisions relating to the control of cats in this state to be made at the local level.”

Well yes, it definitely *is* easier for the state to give these responsibilities to local government, who then in turn use animal control to collect and dispose of these cats – but is that going to solve anything? Or is having the government make laws that force cat owners to desex their pets the key to slowing the killing?

I have to admit up until recently I thought compulsory desexing made perfect sense – it’s kinda a shelter mantra “desex! desex! desex!” and “if everyone was made desex their cats, then we wouldn’t have all these homeless kittens” and that does seem like the solution. But outside of the shelter environment I’ve seen two things that make me feel that compulsory desexing isn’t the magic bullet they hope it will be.

 

1) Owners already do desex the cats they own.

From the RSPCA Victoria’s latest newsletter:
“A recent study on cats admitted to Melbourne shelters and supported by the Bureau of Animal Welfare, found that only 41 per cent of cats were registered (of which 82-90 per cent were desexed).

Animal rescue groups and vets promoting the benefits of desexing has been pretty successful overall – most “good” owners (the ones who would provide other sorts of vet care) already desex. I mean, who wants a spraying tom or house cat on heat? And unlike some naive dog owners I’ve met, they don’t often think they can make money with a litter of kittens.

 

2) The cats that aren’t desexed are either; not officially owned by the person caring for them or not owned at all.

Most of the problem cats are farm or wild cats who aren’t living in a house and may or may not see a vet in their livetime. Many aren’t valued as pets but just live where people do and may be semi or completely feral. This is evidenced by the fact many of the cats surrendered to the Cats Haven aren’t from the Perth metro area, but instead are from Mandurah and beyond.

82 – 90% of owned cats are desexed. Meanwhile unregistered cats have no “real” owners, so even if compulsory desexing was put in place these cats still wouldn’t have anyone to step up, take responsibility and desex them. Worse still, since they aren’t owned (or the person who appears to be the owner would likely deny it’s the case) with these new laws it’s probable that they would have to be seized and impounded meaning even MORE cats killed in shelters. Hardly what they are hoping for, surely?

 

Cat Power!

A new law that sees ranger pitted against elderly cat carers, stray cat feeders and people unfortunate enough to have a preggy momma cat move herself in, is archaic and unhelpful. More important than this idea of compulsory desexing is improving the perception of cats in the community and shelters have a huge role to play in that. If the only times people hear about cats, is that they’re in plague proportions at their local shelter, then their worth goes down. People start to think of cats as vermin.

If laws can’t be changed it might just be a blessing in disguise. Instead of working to bring in heavy handed rules that keep people from caring for these “semi-owned” cats, instead promote cats as the great pets they are and offer discount or free desexing to people who trap their “not-pet” cats.

A great campaign in New Zealand was the Desex and the City. Also in NZ is also a mobile desexing van that has desexed over 5,000 animals free of charge for low income earners. This means the semi-owned cats and the trapped wild cats get desexed and there are less cats in the shelter the next year.

Everyone in WA should throw their support behind a group already doing great things for cat desexing – the Cat Sterilisation Society. If they could raise enough funds to create a WA wide desexing program, then we’d be on the right path to reducing the cats killed in WA.