In WA last year, new laws were drafted that would force WA cat owners to sterilise and microchip their pets. Which would have little effect the majority of WA’s cat owners, as they are overwhelmingly compliant already;
RSPCA spokesman Richard Barry yesterday applauded the move.
“In WA there are about 10,000 cats and kittens euthanased each year.
“Ninety-five per cent of cats are de-sexed by responsible owners.
“It’s those other 5 per cent of irresponsible owners who are the problem.
So who are the last 5%? Poor people.
By August (the following month) the number of cat killed in WA had reportedly climbed by 30%;
Jandakot MLA Joe Francis, who is working on the Bill for the Government, said yesterday he hoped the move would ensure that in 10 years, every cat in WA would be on a national database and the epidemic of thousands of unwanted, healthy kittens being euthanased each year would end.
Animal welfare groups, which have long campaigned for tougher rules on cat ownership, welcomed the moves.
Mr Francis said his research showed 14,000 healthy cats were put down in WA last year.
While the RSPCA weighed in;
RSPCA national president Lynne Bradshaw said State cat laws were long overdue but she also wanted a “dusk to dawn” curfew for all cats.
“We’re keen for this to be taken up as quickly as possible,” she said. “That leaves fewer cats to be bred and fewer cats to be euthanased for no good reason.”
And ahead of the presentation of this legislation at the Cat Welfare Symposium this weekend, this week the cat ‘euthanasia’ rate had climbed again, this time by 42% (in a single year!);
Mr Francis said the cat legislation was a move to ensure the epidemic of thousands of unwanted, unhealthy kittens being euthanased or dumped would end.
“About 17,000 kittens are destroyed every year,” he said.
So with all this double talk and claims of ‘doing it for the cats’ what do we really know?
We have an owned population of cats, who are overwhelmingly desexed.
We have a small undesexed owned population of cats, owned by poor people who could be helped to get their pet desexed (if that were the aim), but who are now instead looking at fines, or having their pet seized for being non-compliant.
And we have a purported kill rate which seems to be guesstimated at best, and getting larger the closer we get to having new cat laws.
Before we drink the Kool Aid and let animal welfare groups drive us in into this future, as animal lovers we have to ask the hard questions.
Mandatory desexing, registration or confinement is a death sentence for free-roaming cats. These kinds of laws have driven up impounds in every place they’ve been tried.
While answers to the stray problem are staring us in the face, how sad that those who should be on the cutting edge of promoting humane solutions and cat protection are still pushing to see ownerless cats treated like garbage; rounded up, killed and thrown in landfill.
There are plenty of solutions for ‘poor people’ to get their cats sterilised. Cat Sterilisation Society. Cat Haven Last Litter Fund. Heaps of vets have subsidised sterilisations. All it takes is for these ‘poor people’ to pick up a phone and find out. If they can’t afford these meager subsidised fees (starting from as low as $35 to my knowledge), why do they have pets? How can they afford to feed and other basic health care if they can’t afford %35 to get their cat sterilised. What a joke.
You’ve given two examples of small programs (less than 200 surgeries per year) both supported by small, private charities.
And ‘vets’ who as ‘for profit’ businesses have no obligation at all to provide discounts to anyone. Sure, some will offer a small discount for pensioners (20%-30%), but I challenge you to find any vets who offer bulk low cost or free desexing, to the wider community.
This can hardly be described as a comprehensive desexing program for WA with a population of 2.2 million people.
As for the idea that ‘poor people’ shouldn’t have pets; large scale, free and discount outreach desexing programs cut down animal control costs tenfold.
So even if you have no compassion for people less fortunate than you or I, maybe you can take solace in the fact that in the long run these programs will be saving our tax dollars. The same dollars these cat laws propose we use to seize and kill the pets of these people who ‘don’t deserve to have them because they’re too poor to afford desexing’.