February 1, 2010Comments are closed.cats
After local rangers found getting ‘three calls a day’ about cats, was more than they could be bothered with; the City of Greater Geelong looked to cat curfew laws to solve their community’s cat issues.
December 2009
Geelong adopts strict cat curfew laws
Cat owners will have to lock their pets up at night under tough new curfew laws adopted by City of Greater Geelong.
Owners will also have to ensure their moggies remain at home during the day rather than letting them annoy neighbours.
The cat curfew laws were instigated by a groundswell in complaints about stray animals, with rangers reporting at least three calls a day about problem pussies.
To support the new legislation, Geelong Council ordered more traps and put out information to residents that they could now, not only trap their neighbours cat, but any strays and take them to Geelong Animal Welfare Society (the major shelter in Geelong).
You don’t need to be a genuis to predict what happens next… a surge in impounds!
February 2010
Cat owners are placing their pets on death row rather than buy or build enclosures to keep them from wandering.
And the numbers surrendered or caught are likely to rise as City of Greater Geelong rangers begin to fine owners that flout tough new control laws, according to an animal-welfare group.
……
Geelong Animal Welfare Society, spokeswoman Marie Willers said she had noticed many more cats being surrendered to the Moolap centre in the first month of the curfew.“It appears that we have had more cats come in; I couldn’t tell you how many but there are definitely more,” Ms Willers said.
Despite authorities trying to spin this as ‘irresponsible owners’ being targeted, the cats falling foul of this law aren’t spoiled housecats, but semi-owneds being supported by compassionate cat-feeders;
“Where in the past people were happy enough to leave the cats around and leave feed out for them, now, because of the curfew, people are realising that they are going to have to be responsible and are bringing them into us.
“I think the cat curfew will draw out people that were just happy to feed their cats, let them wander and their cats would become a problem for the neighbours.”
So this law could be described as targeting strays for removal, rather than an approach to bring down the cat euthanasia rate; and it’s set to get worse, before it gets better;
Ms Willers predicted the number of strays and feral cats would skyrocket in the short term, but were likely to drop once moggies were no longer wandering at large.
So the question now boils down to; will Geelong’s cat curfew and trapping program defy the odds and have such a big impact on the cat population that stray cats become extinct, OR
have they just given animal management complete power to catch and kill cats offering no protection for the cats whatsoever and set themselves on the path of high kill rates of semi-owned and feral cats with no conceivable end?
I guess we all just get to wait and see…
See also; the hilarious culling of cats
i’m having an attack of speechlessness. That’s a pretty rare state for me. When I recover I will try to respond.
Hard to see much future for the moggies in Geelong.
No cat in Geelong shall see the sun unless it is through the bars of a cage.
Any wooly thinking here? Those that most condemned zoos now want all cat owners to construct one in their backyard.
I’m still speechless.
However! If councils really do want to be sincere about this problem they will have to look into it in a lot more depth and involve a lot more people.
For many , the act of confining their cat forever to their own premises is going to be impossible.
This is going to end up in chaos. If many of the cats causing problems are free living cats being fed by humane people the councils have to look at better ways to involve the community to get results.
What about councils helping people instead of scaring the daylights out of them?
They have ordered more traps to be used by the uninitiated and untrained? Traps can’t hurt the cat? I beg to differ, cats can be left in traps in the sun and suffer heat exhaustion, the cat can go ballistic in the trap and severely injure itself and the cat can be psychologically damaged by being confined whilst terrified. People should try sitting in a trap themselves and wondering how and when they will ever get out.
Restrictive laws which take away the rights of domestic pets and their owners have one outcome: they turn people off.
By turning people off you have increased numbers relinquished to pounds and increased numbers of animals dumped by those who still want to give the animal a chance through some serendipitous outcome.
Then what follows is the survivors keep breeding. And the law makers make up more laws.