Remember back when WA rescue groups were lobbying for cat laws and they said the laws would mean we no longer had a cat problem because all the cats would be desexed and so, no kittens? Cat laws were the answer, remember?
So we got the laws. We’ve had them now for 11 months. Last year’s ‘kitten season’ blew out by several months, with shelters reporting doubled and tripled numbers of cats in care. So intense was the deluge, that ‘global warming’ was blamed. Overzealous rangers now with powers to heavy cat owners, began trapping pets, with rescue groups struggling to cope to accommodate the unclaimed. Cat haters have felt empowered to seize cats belonging to their neighbours, while councils have enacted trapping programs, targeting those animals unlucky enough to find themselves without an owner. Nearly 4,000 cats have been thrown into the brand new pound system created just for them. But all this pain was going to be worth it, remember? Because kittens.
So how surprised are we all to see that it is now ‘Kitten Season’ in WA and that it looks astonishingly just the same as every other kitten season we’ve seen in the past…
“We had eight mums and their kittens come in (today). It’s the start of the season and this could go on past Christmas. We can get up to twenty litters of kittens a day, quite easily.” ~ Roz Robinson, General Manager – Cat Haven
It will be extremely interesting to get the final stats coming out of the Cat Haven – one of the loudest proponents of the law – after the extra long kitten season last year, being followed up by something which looks suspiciously similar again this year. If intakes have gone up for them also – when they assured us these laws would lead to numbers going down – these laws to be an unequivocal failure, and those running the organisation should be deemed personally responsible for the unnecessary death of thousands of cats.
Typical government knee-jerk reaction. They aim to target full and entire and stray cats and put the burden on everyone. The people who normally do the right thing continue to do so and the ones that are irresponsible owners continue to do nothing and if the heat gets to close they dump the animal. In addition the laws have contributed to the problem by imposing fees that are unrealistic and target responsible breeders.
The best thing to do with strays would be to trap and de-sex and return to where they were picked up. This way they would not be a burden on cat haven and rescue groups and would continue to survive as they had done before capture. Undoubtedly some of these cats will help in controlling the rodent population as well.
Something needed to be done to try and reduce the terrible numbers of cats that end up in shelters and it may take some time for the real impact to be seen in terms of Euthanasia rates. However, the real and immediate impact has been amongst those registered breeders who follow ethical standards and a code of conduct to breed small numbers of pedigree cats. While some rescue groups may be saying “hooray, all breeders are bad”, there are decent, ethical people who are seeing their hobbies being destroyed for no good reason. These are not the people who are responsible for the cats who end up in shelters. There are plenty of statistics out there to show that pedigree cats are very much the minority when it comes to dumped cats. In a few years time, those kitten buyers who have their heart set on a Burmese, a Siamese or a Ragdoll may find that their choice is limited. Meanwhile, Pet Shops continue to be allowed to bring in “purebred” cats with dubious backgrounds to sell at ridiculous prices!