Question: How do laws that make free-roaming, unowned cats a target for impoundment, reduce shelter killing?
Answer: They don’t
More than 270 cats found roaming within the City of Swan have been put down since new City bylaws were enacted.
Statistics obtained by the Community Newspaper Group confirm 273 cats have been euthanased since the City began impounding straying animals in January 2009.
Chief executive Mike Foley said under the City’s law residents are allowed to trap cats that enter their property uninvited.
Mr Foley said that from January to April this year, 82 cats had been taken in, with 46 being killed.
“Community acceptance of the City’s local law related to cats has been positive and the introduction of State legislation should add value to these existing local laws,” he said.
In 1993 the City of Perth subsidised a cat sterilisation scheme which enabled 591 cats to be sterilised at a cost to the City of around $11,500.00 (around $20 per cat).
In January 2009 the Swan council started their ‘trap and remove’ service. Residents could trap cats, the council could trap cats and they implemented a $100 fine to cat owners whose pets were impounded. Between the months of March and November 2009, council impounded 222 cats of which 183 were killed, (20 were rehomed and 19 were re-claimed). Similarily, this year the pound is also averaging 20 cats per month impounded.
The current City of Swan ’round-up and kill cats’ enforcement model has a budget of $60,000 per year.
Thats $243 PER CAT, of taxpayers money being spent on a program that is increasing intakes. Even if desexing has gone up to $50 per cat with inflation – capturing to kill is still nearly five times as expensive as a desexing program, increases killing in pounds and does little to help owners access cheap and free cat desexing.
But it doesn’t end there; cat groups are now rejecting this program stating;
(the new) proposed legislation – which would make sterilisation, micro chipping and registration compulsory – was a much better alternative than the local laws.
Ignoring that compulsory microchipping, registration and desexing is exactly the same model, but with a different name.
– It’s still based on enforcement, rather than community desexing services
– It still needs councils to invest in impounding cats that fall foul of the law
– It still is a ‘catch and destroy’ pass to animal management and cat hating community members for free-roaming, unowned animals, as a cat without an owner, isn’t going to be registered or desexed.
Except now it’s on a much grander scale, with the new proposed cat legislation mandating that every single council follow in the footsteps of Swan, invest thousands in enforcement and expanding trapping programs across the state.
No increase in the number of cats being desexed. More healthy cats being killed. Huge costs all round.
Question: How do laws that make free-roaming, unowned cats a target for impoundment, reduce shelter killing?
Answer: They don’t
Your blogs always manage to evoke such powerful emotions in me – which many say is even more dangerous as I’m frequently on my soap box about these issues anyway.
9 Lives Cat Rescue is opposing the laws they want to put in place for the very reasons stated above and Swan Council are basically just legalised killers that will not get away with it for much longer!
Hey really, good on you. It’s not easy to be the only one who stands up and goes; what you’re saying MAKES NO SENSE in the face of respected peers and entrenched industry-mantras.
But these laws don’t make sense.
I’ve been blogging for nearly 2 and a half years. I’ve read every paper, every council report, every international speakers notes, every rescue and pet blog I can get my hands on. With a couple of hundred rescuer friends who implore me to STFU and whom I’d really like to just get along with. A job that doesn’t know this blog exists, and that would be at risk if they found it…
… I would love for mandatory desexing to be a good thing for pets and the community. I would love for it to do what they say it does. I would love to shout the successes from the rooftops – everything about it would be easier for me.
But I can’t. I’ve never found, ever, ever, ever a successful mandatory desexing initiative. There is not one community in the whole world, that can hold their mandatory desexing program up and say; here! look – we’re no longer killing pets!
What I do have is hundreds of examples where it’s cost a fortune, disadvantaged poor people, terrorised pensioners, built rifts between cat carers and animal control, impeded outreach desexing programs and often, driven up kill rates.
Ignoring the facts because we don’t like them keeps us locked in a loop of failure. We have to move beyond this thinking for the sake of the animals we claim to be helping.
I was on ‘my soapbox’ a little while ago too, ranting against the views that I see continually expressed on blogsites of rescue organisations and by rescuers themselves.
We have to get past this convenient idea perpetuated by the big shelters and taken up by the little independent ones. Stop blaming the public. Start blaming the councils and the shelters and the government because they will not do anything other than kill. Councils won’t do anything until they are forced to do it.
If I see another statement about how ‘people should desex their animals’ I might scream.
I live in hope that one day we will have a council and a government who will support, assist and allow TNR.