I am concerned about the implications of the ACT Cat Plan 2021-2031 and the Domestic Animal Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 for unowned and semi-owned cats in the ACT.

Historically, the ACT Government has taken no action to deal with the population of unowned and semi-owned cats in the ACT. A typical street cat in Canberra can be found in industrial and commercial areas of Canberra. In these areas, cats have lived there for generations, and many businesses feed and care for them. These businesses and cat caretakers have no problem with the cats being around but do not wish to see them reproduce. Faced with 5-10 cats, desexing and taking ownership of them is not achievable for most caretakers.

While there are various laws regarding the keeping of cats in the ACT, including compulsory desexing, and cat containment in specific locations these laws do not easily apply to unowned cats. By definition they have no owner to desex them, or keep them contained.

It is for this reason that Canberra Street Cat Alliance (CSCA) was founded in 2014, to fill the gap and do something to help the unowned cat population of Canberra. They do this by taking in kittens and any injured adult cats off the streets placing them in foster care so they can be tamed and adopted, and desexing, microchipping and vaccinating those adults who not social and are welcomed back by their caretakers. 

These cats are then cared for the remainder of their lives and given vet treatment as needed. This method of dealing with street cat populations has been proven to be effective and when done at a high enough intensity, will lead to a reduction in their population.

The ACT legislation makes it illegal to own a cat born after July 2022 that is not contained to the owner’s premises. What this means for organisations such as CSCA is that they will no longer be able to desex and ‘own’ cats that live and are cared for outside. While they could still take kittens and a small number of unsocialised adults for adoption, without desexing the parents, this is a pointless exercise as those parent cats will simply continue to breed.

The ACT Cat Plan offers no solution except suggesting that all cats should be owned and contained. This is not a feasible or achievable strategy. There are not enough foster carers to socialise hundreds or thousands of unfriendly adult cats every year, and not enough adopters to adopt hundreds or thousands of timid cats that may barely cope in a domestic household. The only option is then to capture and euthanise thousands of cats per year. The resources needed for this will be immense let alone the emotional stress for vets called on to euthanise them in large numbers.  

However, this ad-hoc killing will not make a difference in reducing the cat population as around 30-50% of the street cat population will need to be killed every 6 months for up to 10 years see a reduction in numbers. The ones not killed will be left undesexed and continue to breed.

Unfortunately the ACT Cat Plan 2021-2031 will result in the CSCA and other similar cat rescues currently desexing and helping street cats to stop operating in the ACT.

The ACT Government needs to grant an exemption to allow organisations such as the CSCA to operate in industrial and commercially zoned areas. An accompanying research study would enable the Government to evaluate the impact of desexing cats.

• D Gale, Evatt

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