Vanessa Parton and Anna Reimondos are the ultimate crazy cat ladies, “owning” hundreds of cats between them across Canberra – but it’s not as insane as it might at first sound.
They both work for the Canberra Street Cat Alliance and are currently fighting tooth and claw to raise enough funds for a multipurpose facility. As they see it, they’re hoping to save Canberra from its fate of being overrun with street cats in the very near future.
“We are the ultimate cat ladies,” they laughed. “Legally, we are the owners to probably hundreds of street cats.”
Without a multipurpose facility, the Street Cat Alliance will be witness to more kitten deaths, just like little Donovan.
“We lost a little kitten recently, a four-week-old named Donovan, and he fought really, really hard for two weeks with us. But, despite the best vet treatment, he did unfortunately lose his battle,” said Ms Parton, while holding Donovan’s sister.
“So, we’ve launched our Donovan’s Dream campaign. We had a dream for Donovan, that he would live a long, happy, healthy life, so we want ‘Donovan’s Dream’ to be a multipurpose facility.”
Alliance president, Ms Parton, and treasurer, Ms Reimondos, say the ACT Cat Plan, due to come into effect on 1 July, will actively increase the street cat population.
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Ms Parton says they’re already drowning in requests for assistance and cannot continue to maintain their important work without a multipurpose adoption centre and intake facility.
“We’ve had multiple discussions with the ACT Government, and we submitted quite an in-depth submission to them about our concerns in regard to the plan. There are aspects of this plan that we are in complete agreeance with,” Ms Parton said.
“However, the Cat Plan does not account for unowned cats, and they’re the cats we deal with. These cats are born and living on the streets of Canberra through no fault of their own.”
ACT Minister for City Services, Chris Steel, said the government’s new approach to cat colony management moves to a policy of ‘trap, neuter, adopt’ (TNA), which is a process the Alliance follows, along with a release program.
“Roaming cats live shorter lives on average and experience more diseases and injuries than those that are contained to the home. They also cause significant harm to native wildlife like Canberra’s great bird population,” Mr Steel said.
“We want to see more street cats find good homes with responsible owners. Volunteer animal welfare organisations play an important role in this, so we will use the next few months to work closely with local groups to help them adopt new practices and monitor the impact of these reforms once implemented.”
Ms Parton and Ms Reimondos say the ACT Government don’t have the resources to TNA, and without a multipurpose facility to help them do the work, cat numbers will “explode”.
They also reject the premise that street cats kill wildlife, saying they’re generally being fed by the Canberra industrial sector, and have no need to hunt, unlike feral cats.
This year alone, the Alliance say they’ve already taken in 200 cats off the street, but unless they’re able to obtain a larger facility, they’re going to have to scale back their operation.
“We cannot maintain the demand that we’ve got. It’s just insane, we do not have the resources to do it,” sighed Ms Parton.
“So, if we get our multipurpose facility, for the next two years we can just go hard, de-sex as many street cats as we can, and hopefully by the end of that when we are no longer able to ‘trap, neuter, release’ the community cats, we’ve got most of the issue controlled.
“So that’s why we want to go hard, and we need a facility. We can’t do it with our current resources. It’s impossible.”
With 160 cats currently in their care, they’ve estimated they will have to take in 600 cats this year, and without a facility, they’ll have to scale that back to around half.
To make matters worse, Flossie’s Kitten Rescue is set to close next month, and the Alliance is expecting to absorb a proportion of the cats they supported.
“In the end, the whole entire Canberra community benefits from our multipurpose centre, because it will also have an adoption centre in it and our aim is to have less cats on the street,” Ms Reimondos said.
“Even if you don’t like cats, and many people don’t, it’s fine, our aim is to have less cats on the street. So, we always say – if you hate cats, donate to us!”
