December 4, 2009Comments are closed.cats
When you have the situation that impounded cats are nearly always killed, it makes little sense to bring about legislation which increases the number of them impounded.
However, for the spittle-spewing, compulsory registration/microchipping/desexing brigade, owner-targeted legislation was never about bringing down shelter kill rates. If it were they would be heeding the ever-growing international evidence that compulsory R/MC/D has increased impounds (and therefore shelter killing) everywhere it’s been tried. And now, as one by one councils fall for the spiel of animal welfare groups, we’re seeing first hand not only the same failure to reduce killing, but an increase of shelter killing after these laws are implemented here in Australia too.
Bleak future for unwanted cats
The region’s animal welfare workers are facing the grim prospect of euthanizing hundreds of cats and kittens before Christmas as a deluge of unwanted pets hits their doors.With the peak breeding season just started, Moreton Bay shelters are already nearing capacity.
Dakabin RSPCA shelter manager Tanya Griffin believes the introduction of mandatory cat registration in the Moreton Bay region this year had contributed to the high numbers.
“It’s made people surrender a lot more cats because people refuse to pay for registration,” Ms Griffin said.
“Ultimately every season we euthanase thousands of unwanted kittens (across Queensland) because we have too many of them.”
Certainly the logic is deliciously tempting; if the cat owner won’t pay for registration, then they’re clearly a ‘bad owner’ and shouldn’t have a cat.
However in the case of the semi-owner, these people were never the owner of these cats in the first place. They were just nice people, compassionate enough to give an unowned cat a little bit of food. But under this new legislation, they are forced to bring their ‘community cat’ in for disposal.
The result? A semi-owned cat is dead, another (undesexed) cat moving into its territory to take its place and an owner who likely will never visit a shelter again because they were treated like dirt (as surrendering owners usually are) when they did exactly what they were asked to do.
With a pet limit of two associated with this legislation, now the owner with ‘too many’ cats is forced to choose their favourite and surrender any others.
The result? A cat loving owner who will never visit a shelter again, because people rarely get their next cat, from the people who killed their last.
Add to all of this, the usual fallout from empowering cat haters to start trapping any cat without an owner, and volia! A perfect storm.
More powers to animal management departments, more surrenders, more door knocking of owners, more fines written and more impoundments… all of which push cats into shelters where they are killed.
Round and round we go. While the bodies of thousands of dead cats continue to pile up. What a shame we can’t just stop hating the public and choose to get off this roundabout.
The ONLY way to bring down shelter kill rates is stop targeting owners as criminals with more and more draconian legislation and to instead offer support services that help people and keep pets safe in their homes.
