The big news in WA animal welfare, is the ongoing saga of the ‘Stirling cat ladies’:
City of Stirling Mayor David Boothman said the City first became aware that there was an issue with the property on Sixth Avenue in May 1987 when it received a complaint from a neighbour.
“In the 23 years since the first complaint, the City has made hundreds of visits to the property, issued dozens of formal notices on multiple issues including removal of rubbish, reduction in number of cats on the property, repair of property, maintenance of water supply, electrical and gas services and removal of undergrowth in addition to conducting multiple ratepayer funded cleanups of the site,” he said.
The council and Cat Haven have entered the property to seize the cats and try and force the sale of the property, after support efforts by social services were rejected and complaints from neighbours became too loud to ignore.
Now, there is no denying these ladies need help. Ursula Dueschen is in her 80’s living with her elderly daughter Tatyana in a caravan without sewers, plumbing or electricity. The decision to finally force them into accepting assistance, is nothing but a good thing for both the community and the cats themselves. But here’s where it gets misleading;
Cat Haven spokeswoman Jessica Reid said said the situation highlighted what can happen when cats are neglected and unsterilised.
“Apart from the health issues for the cats themselves when they breed out of control, cat colonies causes massive issues to the environment as well as problems within communities,” she said.
“Unsterilised cats having an increased tendency to start cat fights and mark their territories on neighbouring properties, so you can imagine what a colony of 30 cats that can have three litters of kittens a year each could do.
“It really highlights the need for compulsory state sterilisation laws which we hope to see going through parliament very soon.”
Not only did the major ‘cat advocacy’ group in the state just tell people that “cat colonies causes massive issues to the environment”, then rounded up the cats and killed them – but proposed that a situation that had run on for 23 years, that a myriad of social support services, police, council and ongoing legal action couldn’t resolve… could have be fixed with a law that requires ‘cats get desexed’.
Sorry, no deal.
We need to stop listening to groups who will use an unfortunate situation with a couple of ladies who clearly have medical and personal issues, as a platform to run down the animals they claim to be working to protect.
We need to stop listening to groups who will use the ‘car crash’ media surrounding this most pitiful situation (check out the ‘photo gallery’ CATS, RATS AND RUBBISH) to promote an insultingly oversimplified solution – mandatory desexing – to the complex issue of cat management. One that make no logical sense, has caused more problems than it’s solved in every place it’s been tried and that is rapidly losing support within the industry.
Instead, we need to become involved and offer intelligent solutions to the cat issues of WA. It is being debated now. Contact the Cat Haven and demand to be included.
What struck me about this situation was that countless people and organisations who should have a better understanding with what is happening here have no idea at all. These do gooders have proportedly “assisted” these ladies with their problems but no one has changed the status in 23 years…disgraceful.
There is not a problem with these ladies it is with the assistance they have proportedly been given. The wrong assistance.
I am sure with volunteers to assist with their cats “welfare and health” and someone to visit them on a regular basis to help organised their yard would be more beneficial than to kill their cats and ridicule them. To allow councils to run up huge bills on their behalf for what appears no real outcome should be questioned also. This is a good example of bureacrats gone mad.
I think what offends me, is that while lots of people claim to be, no one is truly advocating on behalf of cats.
If I was the leader of an organisation working to improve the situation for homeless people, and my approach was to refer to the homeless as diseased, toxic to the environment and advocated that the most humane thing we can do for them is a mandated death… I don’t believe I’d be taken seriously.
And yet here we have the major cat welfare group in WA doing exactly that.
One would expect that if you are representing yourself as a cat advocacy group, taking donations and influencing legislation… that your focus would improving the situation for cats. Not running them down in the eye of the public and killing them as efficiently as possible.