The ACT RSPCA has long claimed that their cats laws are a ‘success’ wanting them introduced across the ACT, despite ten years of them making very little difference to the number of cat and kitten intakes and their overall stats remaining pretty much static.
It seems there is a ‘sweet spot’ between 2,000 and 3,000 cats annually entering the facility, fluctuating on factors unaffected by thumping cat owners with heavier and heavier ownership restrictions.
And this week, the acting RSPCA ACT spokeperson let slip what those factors might be…
The ACT government has declared 11 suburbs or areas to be cat containment zones….. RSPCA acting chief executive officer Jane Gregor said she didn’t believe that policy was a factor in fewer feral cats being received by the society. She said the feral cats were true wild animals rather than recently escaped domestic cats.
“The reduction could be because of the weather we’ve had. It’s been hot over the last 12 months and that can certainly have an impact on the number of litters being born,” she said.
“That’s probably more of a reason than anything else.”
That’s right, the weather. The RSPCA ACT are admitting that the weather probably has more effect on the behaviour and survival of outdoor animals, than say, some new legislation drafted up in an air-conditioned parliamentary office and uploaded online. I know, shocking.
This is actually a pretty big oopsie, as the weather is only supposed to be mentioned by RSPCA spokespeople, if they’re talking about global warming increasing shelter loads (even though cat breeding seasons are determined by length of daylight hours, not ‘hottness’), as an explanation for increased killing, and as a reason for new cat laws. See the logic? No? That’s ok, no one really does.
The truth was always that cat laws don’t work in controlling strays. The feral and free-roaming cat population is perfectly self-sustaining and able to maintain their populations without pet cats somehow joining them. How many cats their are in any population depends more on the environment and the resources available – than what laws a state government has passed targeting pet owners, or even the haphazard trapping efforts of the majority of local councils.
(See ‘The inconvenient truth about cats’).
If a shelter is not running programs specifically targeting strays – either trap and kill programs (which see higher rates of killing, without a forseen end), or trap, desex and return programs (which keep cats out of shelters and reduce intakes long term) – then for them to suggest they have any influence at all over the number of cats living in the community, and potentially able to enter their facility, is simply fantasy.
Shelters who claim success and don’t practice TNR have no reason at all to celebrate their ‘effectiveness’. Probably the most influential factor in how many cats enter their care is simply the weather.
