Is anyone else seeing a trend? From Queensland last year;
The Animal Management (Cats and Dogs) Act 2008 was passed on December 11 2008 and is designed to encourage responsible pet ownership by introducing compulsory registration and identification. The Act took effect throughout south-east Queensland councils on July 1 2009, with the rest of the state scheduled to come in line within two years.
And now today;
Leanne Christie fears her neighbourhood has become a street of missing moggies, after three of her much-loved cats disappeared.
The animal lover said the most recent loss was last week, when her seven-month-old kitten Cougar vanished one afternoon — but her neighbours have also complained of disappearing pets.
“I’ve had three cats disappear in a year and my neighbours say they’ve lost two cats this year,” she said. “Another lady down the street lost her cat and there’s always posters up for missing cats.”
She said she knew of about eight cats that had vanished in recent months.
Due to the large number of missing animals, Miss Christie believes they are being deliberately caught and taken away.
RSPCA Bundaberg shelter manager Vicki Beer said it was not unusual for free-roaming cats to disappear.
“Any neighbour could have a cat trap in their yard and it’s quite within their rights to trap your animal if it comes on their property,” Ms Beer said. “They should bring (trapped cats) to the RSPCA or tell the council, but that doesn’t always happen.”
See that’s bad. We should be against that. It’s not reducing shelter intakes (and killing) if people are trapping owned (and unowned!) cats and taking them to the shelter. We should be working on things that keep cats out of shelters.
Like this:”Cove officials, residents learn how to control city’s feral cat population”;
Mike Fry stressed that a lethal method to controlling cat colonies is an expensive and never-ending battle.
“Once the carrying capacity for the population is reached, for each adult that is removed, there are plenty of kittens to take its place,” he said.
The most successful method is the “TNR” process by which animals are trapped, neutered or spayed and released back into the colony. Fry said the goal is to sterilize at least 70 percent of the population — that is the key number to stop the growth of the colony.
“It’s the only solution right now that works,” he said. “And if done correctly, it can be an incredible success.”
We’re ignoring experiences like this, in preference of;
new law -> trapping increases -> blame society, come up with newer law -> empower trappers even further -> trapping increases…
Being played out time and time again. I wonder how many examples we’ll need, how many thousands of cats will need to die, before we finally acknowledge that blaming the public and dreaming up new laws is not working?
