who's for cats

Yesterday I went out to visit the Coldstream Animal Aid centre as part of the Who’s for Cats campaign being run by Victorian Animal Aid in partnership with The Lost Dogs’ Home, RSPCA Victoria, Cat Protection Society and Lort Smith Animal Hospital.

Me with Debra Boland from Animal Aid in Coldstream. Debra says, "more cats desexed now means fewer kittens ending up at our shelter or born into a life of suffering and disease."

These agencies are offering to desex and micro-chip ‘semi-owned’ cats at a discounted rate for people willing to take full ownership of the cat.

‘Semi-owned’ cats are defined as cats that wander the neighbourhood and are fed by different people, but don’t have a home or owner.

Each year thousands of cats need to euthanised because not enough homes can be found for them. Semi owned cats can become part of the feral cat population and wreak havoc on our precious wildlife in Yarra Ranges.

From 10 April this year, all cats being registered with Council for the first time must be desexed (please note exemptions may apply on veterinary advice).

Compulsory desexing is one way Council can assist the ‘Who’s for Cats’ campaign in reducing the amount of unwanted cats in our community. Cats can have their first litter when they are as young as six months of age and their population can escalate rapidly.

I encourage the community to support the ‘Who’s for Cats’ campaign. Desexing your pets forms part of responsible pet ownership, just like registering and microchipping.

If you do have a new kitten, please visit your vet and make arrangements for your pet to be desexed, or if you are one of many people feeding an unowned cat, consider taking full ownership of it and having it desexed and microchipped as part of the campaign offer.

The ‘Who’s for Cats’ campaign will run throughout March. For more information contact Animal Aid on 9739 0300 or visit www.animalaid.org.au or the ‘Who’s for Cats’ website.

cool for cats

Report from the roundtable - 9th June

Late last year council adopted the Domestic Animal Management Plan. The purpose of the plan is to increase the profile and importance of domestic animal management at a local level. One of the key actions from the plan was to make mandatory the compulsory desexing of cats.

I was happy to move a motion to formalise the compulsory desexing of cats.

This is me with our much beloved family pet. He's desexed, chipped, registered and always kept in at night per the Yarra Ranges cat curfew.

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I am sure that responsible cat owners would be more than happy to desex their animals. Feral animals, particularly cats, are a huge problem in the Dandenong Ranges. Cats are excellent predators and the wildlife losses are immense due to feral cat activity.

The statistics for unwanted cats are astounding, in 2006 53,000 cats were lodged with animal welfare centres across Australia with 35,000 of them being euthanised. That’s an awful lot of unwanted cats out there.

Anything we can do to try to stop unwanted animals is a positive move, anything that helps the feral cat population to decline is a positive move. It’s good for cats and it’s good for our wildlife too.

I’m pleased to report that the motion was supported unanimously by councillors.