Knox Council Victoria loves to blame its community for its cat ‘issues’, and under the guidance of cat ‘welfare’ groups in the state, they get to continue this with enthusiasm. A recent media piece focuses on the costs associated with collecting impounded cats and whether that has any bearing on ‘the naughty, uncaring public’ picking up their cats:
Knox Council has admitted a costly release fee could be the reason behind a high number of cats being left on death row at the city’s pound.
Council figures for 2009-10 showed 87 per cent of cats picked up by council officers were left unclaimed at the RSPCA-run pound.
The RSPCA charges an $80 release fee for cats collected from the pound in the first two days after being impounded.
After that, the fee skyrockets. If a cat spends eight or more days at the pound, an owner must pay $152 to get the animal back.
If the cat is not claimed, it is euthanased. Only a limited number are found a new home.
Now no doubt $152 is a hurdle to cats being collected by owners. But 13% isn’t actually that low when it comes to cat reclaims. This is because a Victorian study of 26,000 cat intakes showed 80% of cats have never had owners, so have no hope of ever being collected.
In 2009, this fact was pretty much accepted when the council launched their Domestic Animal Management Plan, with council making traps available to residents to trap wandering feral and wild cats;
A majority of the 370-plus cats trapped each year are semi-owned or unowned. Only 14 per cent of those trapped in 2008 were released to an owner.
More than 94.14% of registered cats in Knox are already desexed, and it would be fair to assume the majority of those would be microchipped – so if the cats in the pound are unmicrochipped and undesexed, council should know they’re most likely ownerless strays.
So something has changed at Knox for them to start declaring ‘cost’ and lack of owner redemptions, as the reasons for high rates of killing. Are they simply priming their community for their upcoming compulsory desexing launch in April? Or is something more afoot?
Mr McKail said council would look at alternative options when the contract for the pound ran out in the next 12 months.
He admitted a change in management was likely to be the only way the fees would be lowered, but did not commit to altering the RSPCA model.
“That will involve a bidding process, which will be a chance for them to reduce the rates,” he said.
The council uses the RSPCA Animal Rescue Centre in East Burwood to house stray pets.
I predict there’s a shakeup happening behind the scenes and we’re about to see the Knox RSPCA tender move to the LDH. You heard it here first!
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I’ve written about the refreshing honesty coming from Wyndham Council previously, where council’s dawn to dusk curfew (that its had since 2006) had done little to reduce the 1200 cats impounded (781 killed) each year. The reason the honesty is refreshing, is that they’re not hiding ‘killing’ under euphemisms like “encouraging responsible pet ownership”, or “improving cat welfare” , but simply calling a spade a spade, giving traps to the public and expanding killing;
Stray cats are rife in Wyndham, the city’s deputy mayor says.
Cr Bob Fairclough said just 55 of 1100 cats impounded in 2009-10 were registered, indicating “a very large feral cat problem in our municipality”.
Alarmingly, 935 of the impounded cats were put down.
The council last week approved plans to manage the city’s cats and dogs over the next four years.
Plans to reduce stray cats include temporarily reducing the bond residents pay to hire traps to catch strays on their property and offering residents who take ownership of a stray cat a discount on having it desexed.
Cr Fairclough welcomed the plans.
He said stray cats spread diseases such as feline Aids and ringworm to domestic cats.
Cr Heather Marcus said two strays she took in last October had ringworm.
“I have ended up with ringworm in my household and it has taken me three months of very hard work to clear the animals of this dreaded fungus,” she said.
“This is one of our biggest issues and certainly is one of the biggest concerns for this council.”
Much better that community cats are all dead, than have ringworm. Got it.
See… honesty.
While Wyndham has kept their killing high by giving traps to the public, they’ve had little success in actually enforcing their cat laws and are understandably leery of committing to more;
The city’s cat control order, or curfew, expired in 2010 after 10 years, without a single fine being issued.
….
Cat owners will not be forced to desex their cats under the plan.The council has said this was not needed because 95 per cent of Wyndham’s 5415 registered cats were already desexed.
Stay tuned for more killing in Wyndham, as they continue to do what they’ve been doing, verbatim.
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Mirroring Wyndham’s ‘success’ in their cat curfew not being enforced against a single cat owner in 10 years, Whitehorse is also leaving their cat management up to community vigilantes;
No night cats have been nabbed during the first five months of Whitehorse Council’s controversial curfew.
The council has not issued any fines or warnings since the cat curfew came into effect last October. The new laws required cats to be locked in their homes from 8pm to 6am.
The council has employed a full-time staff member to administer the program and spent $9000 on 30 cat traps.
Much easier to outsource cat management to people who hate cats, than get those annoyingly expensive and qualified, not to mention humane council officers out of bed after hours… I mean come on people!
Cat owners are obviously nervous
Burwood East cat owner Ursula Kolecki said a blanket curfew across the entire city failed to serve the needs of the wider community.
“It’s a system that is not enforceable and there are cat owners who are anxious about there being cat nappers out there,” she said.
But cat ‘welfare’ groups are decidedly upbeat;
RSPCA animal shelters manager Allie Jalbert said the curfew promoted responsible pet ownership and positive cat welfare. “Cats are less likely to be injured, spread disease, kill wildlife, fight with other cats or breed indiscriminately if they are kept indoors at night,” she said.
Not to mention less likely to fall into the hands of crackpots with council provided, welfare group approved cat traps and grievous intent.
The cats really seem to be the losers here.
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Does this sound like a quote from a) a moderate, science-based animal advocate, or b) a burnt out misanthrope?
He said 90 per cent of cat owners were responsible, but he had heard “the whole gamut of excuses” from the other 10 per cent.
“Mainly they want their children to see ‘the miracle of birth’, or (say) they can’t afford (sterilisation).
“I suggest they go and watch some of the thousands of healthy but unwanted kittens that are euthanased every year and experience the ‘tragedy of death’ instead.
“Anyone who allows their cat to breed adds to the genocide.”
If you guessed neither a) nor b)… but c) a politician who’s been spending too much time with burnt out misanthropes, you’d be right!
Jandakot MLA Joe Francis said cat laws were in the final stages of drafting, and would focus on de-sexing and micro-chipping, with exemptions only for licensed breeders. “I expect a State cat act will be introduced in the near future,” he said.
Can you imagine any other instance where a politician would say;
“Mainly the small section of the public who doesn’t comply say they can’t afford to comply… so we as a government felt rather than work to help them, we thought it important to ignore their plight and bring in a universal law, in an effort to punish them.”
Yeah, no.
We know where the cats are coming from in WA. Poor suburbs. Of the 7773 cats brought to the Cat Haven, (3137 of which were adopted) in 2010, the biggest sources were Cannington, Willagee and Balga.
So what do you call a law that is used to target these vulnerable and disadvantaged people? One that effects those people living in poorer suburbs exponentially more, because they are overrepresented as to be breaking the law?
Discrimination.
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Showing that enforcement and coercion is a really hard and expensive way to move the community forward, Ipswich council has a low uptake for cat registration;
Figures show only about 15percent of felines in the region have been registered despite the State Government introducing mandatory registration in 2009.
Nearly two years after the scheme began, Health and Regulation Committee chairman councillor Andrew Antoniolli (pictured) admitted only 5011 of the estimated 32,000 cats in the council area have been registered.
“The population of Ipswich reached 165,000 last year and it was estimated the combined dog and cat population of the city was around 58,085 or just over one-third of the human rate,’’ he said.
“The current registration of cats is 15.7 percent of the estimated cat population in Ipswich.’‘“The community is reminded that our animal management officers are in the field on a daily basis and may issue infringement notices on people who have unregistered cats, just the same as those who have unregistered dogs.’‘
Cats laws are tricky to enforce; even if you have the budget to go door to door, how do you prove that a cat belongs to a household? Maybe you can scan it for a microchip… if you can catch it. But are the microchipped cats even your problem? Assuming registration is to “reunite cat and owner to reduce kill rates” and not simply revenue raising or a chance to beat up on cat owners, microchipped cats are the least of your worries… it’s the unowned and unchipped cats that are the issue.
Soooo… what is a council to do? Stop with the threats. Stop with the mandatory laws. Stop with the idea that you can heavy the cat owning community into compliance. And simply offer your community a service they believe in.
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Final thought – has anyone else noticed there is an awful lot of cat killing going on in the name of ‘cat welfare’?
