As a companion animal advocate, I spend a lot of time promoting the joys of pet ownership and the benefits of a society which embraces pet owning families. I also campaign for initiatives which encourage and empower pet lovers, as I feel the secret to solving companion animal issues is to tap into community compassion.
Image: Post Secret
But compassion is a funny thing. Distance leads to less compassion, personal connection brings the kind of compassion that moves mountains. And we, the pet lovers of Australia, have personal compassion for our animal friends in buckets, should we be asked to act.
Unfortunately, outside influences, especially from those who we feel know more than us, can sometimes shift our compassionate beliefs from that which we know in our hearts to be true, to whatever we think is ‘for the best’. Think, the dog training student made to ‘check’ and dominate a compliant dog, knowing full well in their heart that it’s serious overkill. Or the person who stands by and watches a horse being abused thinking that the horse breaking expert must ‘know what he’s doing’.
Que the unowned cat. The cat story so far has been one of persecution. Cats of history were associated with witches, black arts and bad luck. Modern cats are blamed for disease, nuisance and the harm of other animals. It seems we love to hate cats.
But why? We’d no more kick a maltese than kill a spouse, but for some reason cat cruelty, including rounding up and killing cats who’ve done nothing more than live a quiet life away from humans is seen as completely appropriate. But here’s the thing; it’s not our fault. We’ve been mislead by those claiming to be acting in the name of ‘cat welfare’.
Cat welfare groups have spent the last twenty years or so, telling us that to show compassion to a cat is a bad thing. In fact they’ve made laws which turned anyone who gives a stray cats a little bit of food into a criminal, made it illegal to own more than two cats (no matter how good an owner you are) and also made it an offence to desex that stray community cat that everyone feeds and put him back into his community. Meanwhile, in Victoria, they’ve spent $5 million dollars on a marketing campaign called ‘Who’s for Cats‘ telling us the only thing we ‘should’ do is help them catch and kill these animals;
People who feed unowned cats need to make a decision; to either be a responsible owner and fully adopt the cat (and have it desexed, vaccinated and microchipped) or call their local council to arrange to have the cat collected.
Lost Dogs Home ‘Who’s for Cats’ page
A campaign which, rather than celebrate cats and cat ownership, portrayed them as dark, shadowy, underworld figures that needs to be ‘collected’ for the greater good.
Unowned cats are also a significant source of nuisance in the community. They prey on wildlife, spray strong smelling urine around houses and cars, fight with owned cats, spread disease, yowl at night, and defecate in gardens and sandpits.
Who’s for Cats website
(Remember, this campaign was devised by groups claiming to be advocating for cat welfare and compassion! One leading participant is even called the ‘cat protection society’!).
Rather than look to help each community manage their own cat problem through desexing outreach programs; they’ve simply pushed the same ‘catch and kill’ mentality which has failed since animal rescue began.
Here’s a news article from 1986 – 23 years ago, by the very same people who brought you ‘Who’s for Cats’.
The Cat Protection Society’s work in trapping stray cats will be extended by a $61,000 grant.
Six people will be employed for 28 weeks to trap wild, stray and unwanted cats.
Dr Smith said they would now be able to do more trapping in industrial areas, in inner city laneways and expected a 25 to 30% increase in the number of cars handled at the society’s shelter.
Certainly things have changed little in two decades; they’re still demanding cats be culled, but have now cleverly outsourced the cat trapping to the community. And, by all accounts it’s been a huge ‘success’! From the Lost Dog’s Website:
In 2008 The Lost Dogs’ Home saw a 40% increase in cat admissions compared to 2007.
This was mainly due to Melbourne’s cat over population crisis which saw more strays collected of the streets and brought to the Home.
And they are even now calling for the community to help them build a bigger pound!
What’s more, with climate change being blamed for everything nowadays, groups working under the ‘Who’s for Cats’ banner, no longer have to accept blame for the associated rise in impoundments and killing that they they directly requested take place, but can instead simply blame it on the sunshine;
We, as a community of compassionate cat lovers have to know in our hearts that helping groups, who already kill between 70-95% of the cats they take in, catch even more cats is not something we should want to be a part of.
There are programs that could eliminate the killing of shelter cats overnight and to continue down this path of ‘improved and rebranded’ killing is unethical in the face of these alternatives.
The time is now. The HSUS, who first opposed TNR, now provide resources on running these programs.
Effective strategies for permanently reducing the homeless cat population are essential and Trap-Neuter-Return, when properly implemented, offers such a solution.
The ASPCA, who first opposed TNR programs, now provide resources on running these programs.
The ASPCA endorses Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) as the only proven humane and effective method to manage feral cat colonies.
The Auckland SPCA spoke at the National Desexing Conference and are a good decade into their TNR programs.
The managed colony of cats are of happy disposition and form a part of the framework of our animal inhabitants, who contribute their fair share in the balance of nature. Their elimination is both foolhardy and cruel. Bob Kerridge CEO Auckland SPCA
Australia is the only country who is still fighting the very people who claim to be ‘for cats’ to keep them from continuing to kill cats unnecessarily. The directors of organisations who fail to implement these programs will eventually be forced to evolve when the excuses finally run out. And they will be remembered as the ones who championed killing long after their community begged them to stop.
