The overwhelming evidence from the Australian Institute of Animal Management Conference this year points to failing animal management, rather than an ‘irresponsible public’ for the hundreds of pets being killed in shelters around the country.
While rescue groups campaign for mandatory desexing as the ‘holy grail’ to ending shelter killing, presenter Michael Hayward of the Australian Veterinary Association and Centre for Companion Animals in the Community points out what would seem like the bleedin’ obvious;
Unfortunately it (mandatory desexing) is unlikely to be effective. The ACT introduced mandatory desexing in 2001. By 2007, it had made no significant difference to the number of cats entering, or being euthanased in the RSPCA ACT shelter.
Despite a lack of government enforcement, the evidence suggests there has been a high rate of compliance, so why didn’t it work? The most important reason is that, as Victorian studies have shown, 80% of cats entering Australian shelters are unowned. Such a cat does not have an owner who can be penalised for non-compliance. It is also very difficult to enforce mandatory desexing – you need permanent identification from a very early age and a system to track owners of undesexed cats to force them to comply. This probably means door-to-door inspections and inspecting (catching) every cat, which is clearly difficult in these days of tightening budgets, limited man-power and privacy legislation.
Mandatory desexing is an animal management solution to an animal welfare problem which is, unfortunately bound to fail.
While we continue to blame ‘an irresponsible public who need laws to make them change their behaviour’ as the reason for shelter killing, Tim Adams from the Petcare Information and Advisory Service confirmed that the majority of owned pets ARE being desexed and cared for, in his presentation on the The National People and Pets Survey 2006 which found;
that while attitudes to preparing for pet ownership by desexing and vaccinating were largely unchanged, owner behaviour had substantially improved. In both 1994 and 2006 over 80% of people believed that pets should be desexed unless specifically intended for breeding. So attititudes were unchanged. But owner behaviour had improved marketly. In 1994 only 61% of dogs had been desexed. By 2006 this had risen to 78%. The number of desexed cats had also risen slightly, from 91% in 1994 to 93%.
and
79% of owners have never had their pet go missing for long enough to cause concern
and
Less than 5% of dogs and cats ever need the services of a pound or shelter.
So why then, are we still killing?
The answer lays simply with our refusal to stop punishing an already compliant public and instead work on improving our failure to save the lives of these pets. Rather than support our community in their efforts to be compassionate, we bring in stick-not-carrot programs that turn the pet lovers who do something kind, like give a stray cat a little bit of food… into criminals. Ironic, given these are the exact same people could and would be the biggest supporters of any life saving programs should we chose to actually implement them.
From the presentation on the ‘Who’s For Cat’s Program’ by Neva Gladman of the Bureau of Animal Welfare, Department of Primary Industries, VIC;
The cat overpopulation problem can be attributed to a number of factors, such as supply exceeding demand, the high reproductive capacity of cats, and general attitudes towards the species which manifests in irresponsible cat ownership.
A Victorian study tracked the fate of 25,810 cats entering animal shelters over a 13 month period. It confirmed that the majority of cats admitted to shelters were unowned, and that most ended up being euthanased. Cats were primarily euthanased because they were wild or feral, due to poor health or because not enough homes could be found for them. Even more tragically, thousands of those euthanased victims were healthy, sociable kittens.
Various council pounds and animal shelters across Victoria have reported record numbers of cats being brought in for surrender since late last year. Some shelters have reported a 50% increase (since the launch of the Who’s for Cats Program)
We blame the market, the cats and the public. But we never blame ourselves for killing young, healthy, adoptable pets or implementing programs that increase shelter intakes.
Encouraging people to help us kill the unowned, was never a lifesaving initiative.
Imagine if the campaign focused, instead on forcing ownership, on encouraging these cat lovers to simply continue as they have been but with their neighbourhood cats desexed. They can desex more than one feral if they were really keen! Support them with condition free, low-cost desexing. And tell them to tell their friends and neighbours to help catch and desex their own community pusses. Make it a yearly event – the annual drive for cat lovers to desex their way to less cats.
Managing cats is not about mandatory desexing or forced ownership – it’s about compassion for these animals and respecting their right to live out their lives, regardless of their ownership status. Valuing only animals who have families is no longer acceptable to the community. Pet lovers in a modern society expect those people working in ‘animal welfare’ to offer these animals protection and want to see them saved.
They don’t donate to us for us to use the money to kill pets. They don’t donate to us to wring our hands and say ‘we have no choice’. And they certainly don’t donate to us so we can bring in programs that increase the numbers of pets we kill.
We have an already overwhelmingly supportive and compliant public, it’s time we started believing it, rejoicing and harnessing their power to save the lives of pets.
See also: The No Kill Equation
