Greater Dandenong has a problem. Despite passing compulsory microchipping and registration laws…
Greater Dandenong senior animal management officer Richard Asquith said about 75 per cent of cats impounded by council were feral.
“It’s a constant challenge to try to reverse that trend, and they get put to sleep because we can’t put them in any home,” Mr Asquith said.
Dandenong Leader
Seems like a pretty straightforward situation, yes?
If the cats you’re bringing in are largely ‘untame’ and you’re killing them for not being ‘pet cats’, then you’ll want to work on programs which target these untame, not-pet cats. You’d want to get cracking on programs which target the untame, stray population and keep them out of your pound.
Yes? No…
“Unfortunately cats seem to be a disposable commodity and if you look in the Trading Post at any given times it says ‘kittens free’, because people won’t go out and desex them … there’s a constant oversupply.”
Holy hyperbole, Batman! You must have terribly negligent cat owners in your community…
“Mr Asquith said some councils had introduced mandatory desexing, but the vast majority of registered cats and dogs in Greater Dandenong were already desexed.”
Um, wait. What?
“As such, he said council was looking at other options to address the feral cat colony issue, including discouraging people from feeding strays.”
So here we have a council WHO KNOW WHAT THE ‘PROBLEM’ IS – ie. ‘feral’ and stray cats breeding in the community unchecked.
While the ‘solution’ they’ve come up with is to whine a bit (something about the Trading Post) and to then to ask that people leave the cats they may be giving food to, to starve.
“It’s hard because people do it out of the best possible intentions, but if you keep feeding one cat, there’s going to be 20 little cats going hungry.”
Can you imagine for one moment, any other council provided service using this as a ‘solution’?
Too many clients requiring hospitals? Starve them.
Too many clients using women’s shelters? Starve them.
Too many disadvantaged youth? Starve them.
Homeless on the street? Starve them.
It just doesn’t seem like a plan from an agency that has its priorities in order. People and their pets use council pounds because council pounds are public services that the community need. A healthy community looks out for those families who need extra support, and to the best of their abilities, provides services to support them. Especially when there are innocents involved – be it children or animals.
The fact this animal management department’s motto is – ‘you bring ’em in, and we kill ’em. Please also extend our lack of compassion to your own lives, by letting any animal you may have found in the community starve and linger – it’ll go away to die eventually’ – should leave every one of the city’s animal loving tax payers, disgusted.
The great irony is, rather than a finger waggling piece, it should have been a cause for celebration. We have overwhelmingly responsible cat owners, and an enormously compassionate community who clearly care about the welfare of these cats. With those two factors in place, we are basically unstoppable! If we put our heads, hearts and effort into solving this problem, we can find a solution.
Unfortunately, Council have chosen instead to maxmise death. All you well intentioned people, stop being so gosh darn nice and start treating cats like your council does – like trash to be collected and disposed of. Greater Dandenong ~ a starving kitty here, a dead kitty there… it’s all the same to us.
See also: Oops! Everything we know about cat management is wrong
Council requires that for a cat to be registered it must be desexed and microchipped. That is why their statistics for registered cats are so good. The only people registering are the ones who are doing the right thing. These people may well be the minority in the municipality. Its says nothing about their “citizens” as a whole, as there are many more cat owners that don’t register their cats because they are not desexed or microchipped. I feel that the only way forward is for all pet shops to only be allowed to sell ‘shelter’ or ‘pound’ cats who have already been desexed.
I don’t even think the rate of registration is the significant factor here. We have a pound determining 75% of their cat intakes to be ‘feral’ and unsuitable as pets.
Now, they simply can’t have it both ways;
– either pet cats are having the litters that are entering the pound, and the intakes of untame cats should be relatively low OR
– the cats are being born ‘wild’ and pet owners aren’t to blame.
This idea of hundreds of ‘feral’ cats being born in people’s homes is both illogical and flies in the face of pretty much al the research available on shelter cat populations.
Umm, desexing’s a requirement in Monash, or you’ll pay close to $150 per year for registration. With no low/no cost programs operating in the area, they’ve counted out pensioners and low income earners from registration, desexing is too expensive for many and registration is also too expensive…what do you suggest they do?
The cat limit also sucks huge balls…The council says people are dumping cats in increased numbers…LIARS! I’ve had 11 cats living here, they were all vax’d and desexed, they all had more room to move and more socialization then those at the pound, I knew each cat by their name and could give anyone a brief run down of each cat’s temperament, but only 3 could be registered. It would’ve been a serious disservice to ‘let’ the council take them, individual itty bitty cages, no socialization, no human interaction, an injection of the ‘green dream’. Plz explain?