More than 53% of us (that’s over 12 million) share our homes, lives and often our beds, with a dog or cat, or both. We consider them members of our families and spend more than $4.62 billion every year caring for them.
Given this groundswell of love for animals, there is enormous potential to tap into this compassion to promote effective and humane management of homeless cats and dogs in our communities.
This begs the question, why did the Victorian Government choose to spend over $220,000 on a two-year cat management campaign that succeeded only in driving up kill rates while demonising free-roaming cats and all those who choose to care for them? The ‘Who’s for cats?’ campaign was hailed a success in changing behaviour by all bodies involved, but the bigger picture reveals some damaging and costly end results.
