Should there be a Cat Licence ?

Mo60

The Sweeper wrote: »

So is letting your dog roam. So is beating your kid. So is wearing your seatbelt. They're all choices. Except in the face of evidence most people don't choose to let their dog roam, beat their kids or leave their seatbelt unbuckled, because choosing those options is proven time and again to have a potentially very bad ending.

I choose to let my cats roam and so have 100% of people I know, we all made that choice so thank you, yet again, for your opinion. But this thread is supposed to be about having a cat licence in Ireland.

planetX

It's not as black and white as farm and town cats. What about the number of people in rural areas which are not being farmed intensively. I'm surrounded by unused fields, I'm also surrounded by people who don't neuter. I've taken in and neutered/vaccinated/wormed and rehomed where possible, and it's nearly ruined me. There's no way I could do this if I had to buy licences. There's no way I could or would do this if I followed the indoor cat creed. The whole idea is nonsense in the context of rural Ireland.

The Sweeper

You're right, licencing isn't about roaming. All licencing programmes are difficult to enforce without up front funding and commitment from local government. Licence fees should be set at a realistic value, and stacked to reflect responsible ownership choices - for instance the licence fee should be higher for undesexed pet cats.

Public education helps too. More money and more wardens means, for instance, people can ring the warden and say 'My neighbour's cat spends most of its life in my yard. It sprays urine against my back door daily and craps in my child's sandbox. I have spoken to my neighbour and they told me to get effed.' The response to that, instead of 'it's a cat, suck it up' should be the warden contacting the neighbour about limiting the nuisance behaviour of their cat. The warden may also offer a cat trap to trap the cat when it's intruding in someone else's yard.

The full range of animal control laws, if implemented, would mean the trapped cat was microchipped. The microchip would identify the owner and whether or not the cat was registered. The owner would be contacted to collect their cat and asked to pay a fee for collection - if the animal is desexed and registered, maybe free or nominal to cover administration costs - say 10 euros. That collection fee would go up if the cat was not desexed or registered, to the point of being quite punitive - for instance 80 euros to collect an entire, unregistered cat over a year old.

Nuisance behaviour is nuisance behaviour, regardless of the species. Nobody should have to put up with nuisance behaviour from someone else's pet. And by 'nuisance' I really mean that in the true sense of the word - a cat passing through your yard isn't really a nuisance. The same, identifiable cat spraying piss on your house and crapping in your raised vegetable beds week after week is a nuisance, and you should have some recourse.

A lack of recourse through legislation means frustrated people dealing with nuisance behaviour take things into their own hands - a saucer of antifreeze, trapping the cat and driving 30 kilometres into the woods and dumping it, a shot from a BB gun, so on.

You need to think longer-term, bigger picture. The argument of 'oh but irresponsible owners will just abandon their cats and those cats will die' - well you know something, people are ****. And they may well abandon their cat, and it may find a new home, and it may not. But, crucially, as long as the legislation remains in place, they will never get a cat again.

Registration, microchipping and desexing will also lead to fewer litters of kittens. Fewer litters means fewer unwanted cats - longer term - in rescue. That means the ones who DO end up in rescue have a higher chance of finding a home. Focus can move to no-kill rescue and that approach can be promoted, again achieving public education and placing a higher value on the life of our pets.

Compulsory registration stops people hoarding - a problem when it comes to cats. Councils can have licencing permits in place for multi-cat households. If I want to own more than two cats, I have to get a permit from my council. The permit has a number of basic constraints - I have to be on a block of a minimum size and there is an upper limit of cats I may own. However, if I meet the basic constraints I apply for the permit and the council writes to my neighbours and asks for objections. They then assess the validity of the objections ("I don't like cats" - not hugely valid. "I breed prize winning canaries and the cat lady plans to allow her 10 cats to roam" - considerably more valid.) Once the objections are addressed, either you get your permit or you don't. And of course the permit costs money - not obnoxious money, but a few quid to cover the admin costs etc.

Compulsory licensing also helps in the fight against unscrupulous volume-breeders and gives the council some recourse if they're trying to close down an operation where someone is producing dozens of poorly-bred kittens a year for profit.

The entire policy around domestic animal registration needs to be properly thought out. The licence fee needs to go towards funding a system that provides solutions for frustrated Joe Public dealing with other people's animals. A system that offers control and recourse in the case of complaints leads to greater harmony. Greater harmony is good for everyone, cats included.

The Sweeper

planetX wrote: »

It's not as black and white as farm and town cats. What about the number of people in rural areas which are not being farmed intensively. I'm surrounded by unused fields, I'm also surrounded by people who don't neuter. I've taken in and neutered/vaccinated/wormed and rehomed where possible, and it's nearly ruined me. There's no way I could do this if I had to buy licences. There's no way I could or would do this if I followed the indoor cat creed. The whole idea is nonsense in the context of rural Ireland.

You don't buy a licence for a cat you don't own.

See above on how licencing can affect people's decision to neuter - longer term, bigger picture, your financial commitment to desexing disappears if the kittens disappear. Plus proper animal control laws give you recourse against your neighbours who don't desex their cats and allow them to indulge in nuisance behaviours.

planetX

and dog licences have achieved none of the above.

There is no way what you have described will happen in rural Ireland, unless you are advocating a mass cull. People who just about feed their cats now would abandon en masse if a licence was enforced.

Coriolanus

M not sure I see the point considering the practically non existent enforcement of current licensing.

The Sweeper

The reason dog licensing is such a joke (and why cat licensing would be similarly hilarious unless properly implemented) is precisely because it's not enforced. Animal control laws come pretty low on the list of priorities until there's a big problem.

Usually, mass changes to animal control laws happen when a dog kills a child. Less often, funding appears when someone scientific makes a connection - I'll give you this as an example:

http://www.aspca.org/fight-animal-cruelty/animal-csi/

Short version there is someone in the US made a connection between cruelty to animals and illegal activity, e.g. where there's a dogfight, there's usually a drug and/or prostitution ring, and where there's a family dog with the bejesus kicked out of it, there will often be a domestic abuse situation involving a wife and kids having the bejesus similarly kicked out of them. So there's a mobile crime scene van that investigates animal cruelty because someone somewhere realised it's a fast and accurate link into the successful prosecution of people you were otherwise struggling to identify, or link to crimes, or prove guilty.

There are a lot of dog-killing-child examples of bad animal control laws - DDA in the UK (currently under review) and BSL in other countries. Then there are a few good examples of animal control laws revised - and it takes a LONG time to get it right.

So what's the point of this?

We need a mindset change. Instead of 'That's a crock of ****e, it'll never work, some people somewhere won't be arsed, so let's just not try in the first place' we need to start thinking 'Wouldn't it be great if that worked?'. God knows the politicians doorknock extensively in Ireland when campaigning for election - instead of hiding in the living room and not answering the door because you're not interested in hearing about their plans for refurbishing the local sports centre, why not answer the door and ask them what they're going to do about the nuisance dogs in your estate, or the nuisance cats on your road, or the number of animals euthanised in Irish pounds every year?

planetX

lots of dogs are loose around here - they come out and bark when I pass with my dog, it doesn't bother me. My dog loves when his friend from down the road comes through the back field for a play in our garden. My own dog is never loose because I'm terrified he'd be stolen, but I'm in the minority. My cats are out and about at night hunting mice. Occasionally cattle escape into my parents garden and cause a nuisance on the lawn. They don't call the authorities in, they help the farmer round them up and rebuild the wall.
Life is so much more pleasant with a bit of tolerance.

boomerang

But wouldn't it bother you if those same dogs ran out infront of your car, and caused an accident? You know it's illegal to let your dog roam, right? My whole life is dogs, but I don't think I have the right to impose them (or their fouling) on people who don't like dogs.

There are serious consequences to letting a dog go where it pleases. Just this last week a lady in Clare who was desperate to get her missing family Labrador back discovered the dog's mangled body on a railway line, six days after it had gone missing.

I do think dogs live less rich lives for the confinement we now impose on them. Look at how pet obesity has sky-rocketed. But they are safer, live longer and no longer pose a nuisance to others.

The Sweeper

planetX wrote: »

lots of dogs are loose around here - they come out and bark when I pass with my dog, it doesn't bother me. My dog loves when his friend from down the road comes through the back field for a play in our garden. My own dog is never loose because I'm terrified he'd be stolen, but I'm in the minority. My cats are out and about at night hunting mice. Occasionally cattle escape into my parents garden and cause a nuisance on the lawn. They don't call the authorities in, they help the farmer round them up and rebuild the wall.
Life is so much more pleasant with a bit of tolerance.

What you're describing is tolerance, but all I see is the epitomy of limited thinking.

So dogs rushing at and barking at your dog and you doesn't bother you - but it's probably likely to bother someone else. You're in the countryside, so there's lots of space and the capacity for more tolerance. But in suburbia, dogs who charge fence lines and come out open gates can start all out warfare.

There can't be one law for the country and one for the city. But it's in the cities and their suburbs, where people are on top of each other with their pets, where the incidents happen that make the laws change - and sudden changes are almost always poorly thought through.

You won't appreciate it properly until it affects you directly, like when the laws change dramatically after an incident and suddenly your pets are in the firing line. If the law changes you can't say 'Oh but I'm in the country where we're tolerant so I don't have to abide by that law'.

planetX

boomerang wrote: »

But wouldn't it bother you if those same dogs ran out infront of your car, and caused an accident? You know it's illegal to let your dog roam, right? My whole life is dogs, but I don't think I have the right to impose them (or their fouling) on people who don't like dogs.

There are serious consequences to letting a dog go where it pleases. Just this last week a lady in Clare who was desperate to get her missing family Labrador back discovered the dog's mangled body on a railway line, six days after it had gone missing.

I do think dogs live less rich lives for the confinement we now impose on them. Look at how pet obesity has sky-rocketed. But they are safer, live longer and no longer pose a nuisance to others.

Of course I know it's illegal. I'm one of very few that kits up and walks my dog on a leash. Doesn't mean I'm running to the dog warden to report every loose dog I encounter. It isn't something I get worked up about.