Stats, stats, stats. Nothing else makes many in animal welfare more cray-cray, than the idea that we should be strategising based on figures, not feels.
Meanwhile, from the number of cats that can reproduce on a hot day, to the number of pets produced by puppy farms who are shipped by Fedex direct to dog fighters; stupid and inaccurate assertions abound. Which is why we’re here today to talk about stuff we know.
The 2012/13 NSW Division of Local Government ‘Council Data Collection for Seizures of Cats and Dogs’ raw data has been released (and will I will be delivering a more comprehensive post about individual pounds shortly), but for now we know the following;
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POUNDS
Dogs unclaimed – 22,719
Cats unclaimed – 21,312
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From the RSPCA NSW in the same 2012/13 year…
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RSPCA NSW
Dogs unclaimed – 9,863
Cats unclaimed – 14,311
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TOTALS (combined)
Dogs unclaimed – 32,582 (15%)
Cats unclaimed – 35,623 (97%)
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With cat reclaims still sitting at less than 3%, we should absolutely put to bed the notion that cats go to pounds to be reclaimed by owners. They don’t. Cats go to pounds to get stressed, get sick and die (or be killed).
Sometimes, very occasionally they’re collected by rescue. But it’s not uncommon for pounds to have a zero reclaim, and a zero adoption rate. We HAVE to stop advocating that pounds collect cats, because they do so very badly by them.
Given it incorporates city and country locations, from our NSW total we can get a pretty good idea of a national figure. 30% of people live in NSW, so these figures extrapolated – (sum/3)*10 – we get;
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NATIONAL IMPOUND FIGURES DOGS
Total unclaimed dogs – 108,606
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The reason this unclaimed figure is important, is that these are the dogs actually at risk at the pound. There might be claims of ‘millions’ of abandoned dogs in Australia, but the truth is actually much more modest – just a little over 100,000
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NATIONAL IMPOUND FIGURES CATS
Total unclaimed cats – 118,743
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Unclaimed cats hover at around 120,000. And while certainly many of these cats will not be suitable for rehoming, ALL of these cats deserve care and respect. Solutions other than killing should be found for them.
So the two figures are about 110,000 unclaimed dogs and 120,000 unclaimed cats. Those, are our ‘supply’ side of the equation.
Now many people vehemently argue ‘too many pound pets, not enough homes’. But that in itself is a statement about supply and demand. ‘Too many’ is the supply side. We now have that figure. How about ‘not enough homes’ – that is the demand side.
The Pet Ownership in Australia 2013 survey showed that;
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– 658,000 dogs were acquired each year, and
– 444,000 cats were acquired each year.
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658,000 is nearly 6 times more than 110,000 – so we only need one person in 6 to choose dog adoption, to zero out the killing.
444,000 is nearly 4 times more than 120,000 – so we only need one person in 4 to choose cat adoption, to zero out the killing.
So why are we not?
I would say pretty confidently that most rescue groups are are ‘capacity’ all the time. Most have PetRescue membership and most pets would get a PetRescue listing at some point in their journey.
Last year PetRescue saw about 70,000 placements (surprisingly, about half dogs, half cats).
To get 35,000 dog placements to 110,000 – rescue would have to triple their output.
To get 35,000 cat placements to 120,000 – rescue would have to triple their output.
Is that possible? I expect rescuers reading this are sobbing at the thought. My guess is not.
So where are the pets if they’re not in rescue?
For every one dog being placed by rescue, we now know there is still one at the pound.
For every one cat being placed by rescue, we now know there are still two at the pound.
This is why rescue can feel like there simply aren’t enough homes, and that they’re on a treadmill to nowhere, but in truth, we only need a tiny increase in the numbers of people choosing adoption when they get a pet, and we have many times more homes than we need.
The bottle neck is two-fold;
1) Rescues not having enough capacity (they’re only semi-super human after all!)
… but much more fixable…
2) Pounds not doing their own heavy lifting, their own vet-working and their own rehoming (most doing no rehoming whatsoever!)
So which one is the obvious solution? Leaning much more weight and expectation on tiny, independent charities or asking your council and taxpayer funded local pound why they’re not meeting the expectations of their community?
