The City of South Perth has received $250,000 from the State Government to upgrade their current dog pound to also be able to impound cats, in preparation for the new Cat Act. The City has allocated an additional $250,000 towards the facility, making the total for the pound upgrade half a million dollars.
The pound will service South Perth and the Town of Victoria Park. Their human populations are about 45,000 residents. So the investment in this upgrade is in the vicinity of $10 per resident.
Cat laws aren’t ‘free’. They’re not even close to free.
In fact, if every council made a similar investment to allow them to comply with these new laws, based on two million residents in Perth (not WA, just Perth only) – the investment in (not desexing, not protecting, not improving health, not even in improving outcomes for cats, simply in ‘cat pounds’) is around $20 million dollars.
Can you even begin to imagine, what *could* have been done with $20 million dollars, if it was invested in cat welfare and impound reduction programs?
If it were allocated to groups willing to go out into the community, door knock, find the families with cats that needed desexing, then giving them a voucher for the same?
If the $20 million was pumped into ensuring every single urban stray was desexed?
Instead, the money is going into the coffers of councils and charities willing to impound and kill for a fee. No wonder charities based on impounding cats, love cat laws. It makes them rich.
(It’s worth noting South Perth Council also won a grant for ‘desexing’ – $5,000. Making the investment in impounding cats, 100 times more than their investment in impoundment prevention. All those people championing the notion that councils are going to be proactive and that these state government grants were about saving lives, have unfortunately been mislead.)
See also:
How to create a multi-million dollar industry overnight
How cat laws are being rolled out in WA
Professional cat trappers rubbing their hands with delight, counting down to new cat laws
