Should there be a Cat Licence ?

Cherry Blossom

I live on a large farm and we don't have any feral cats, maybe that's because it's the territory of my neighbours pet cats though. I understand where you are coming from now though as I thought you were talking about pet cats. My own cat is securely confined to the house and gets outside time in the dog run at the minute. If he ever does display a wish to go outside the garden will be cat proofed, although so far he doesn't seem to have any desire to be outside at all.

My point is that if you tell someone there is nothing you can do to control their behaviour they will control it themselves. If cats are causing a nuisance, under the current laws the person who they are being a nuisance to has the right to control them in pretty much any way they see fit. I like to feed the birds and the neighbours know their cats like to catch them so they put bells on their cats collars, they are also fed so are not too much of a problem to the birds (they do catch some). If a feral cat turned up and started decimating 'my' birds I'd have to do something about it - this 'something' would probably mean trapping it, neutering it, confining it and attempting to tame it. This is not the 'something' most people would do in these circumstances. Cat's are no more a native species to Ireland than mink are, feral cats only exist because someone put them in that situation. There was an older lady who used to live around here who fed strays - there hasn't been a stray cat problem since she passed on, I don't know if the cats moved on somewhere else or what became of them but there aren't any now.

Mo60

I would imagine if Ireland were to be, possibly, the first country to licence cats there would be more of a problem with feral cats as some owners would abandon animals rather than pay for a licence.

I still cannot see how licencing would be managed by the authorities, perhaps someone could explain how they think it would work.

Cherry Blossom

Mo60 wrote: »

I still cannot see how licencing would be managed by the authorities, perhaps someone could explain how they think it would work.

The main thing it would provide would be that pounds will accept cats, if you have a problem with a cat you catch it and take it to the pound where it would be scanned for a chip and do it's 5 days - the same as you would with a stray dog. Authorities around here do sod all about stray dogs other than provide a pound to put them in.

Mo60

The pounds are full to the brim with dogs so where would all the cats go?

I have a great vision of wardens attempting to round up hundreds of cats.
The theory of a cat licence is great, but if it was workable and cost effective I am sure it would have been put in place by now.

Cherry Blossom

Mo60 wrote: »

The pounds are full to the brim with dogs so where would all the cats go?

I have a great vision of wardens attempting to round up hundreds of cats.

It's rescues that are full to the brim with dogs not pounds, pounds have to take every dog that comes in to them, they don't stay there indefinitely, they do 5 days and that's it if there is no space to keep them longer. Obviously they might have to make changes to their facility to accommodate cats as I imagine keeping cats and dogs too close to each other would be unacceptable. Shouldn't be a problem for my local council as they are always in a mad rush at the end of the year to get all the money spent that's been allocated to them.

I've yet to see a warden attempting to round up anything, not that it's that hard you just leave out a cat trap with food in it and then come back for it.

Shanao

Lawliet wrote: »

YMy main worry is that these problems would cause owners to mistreat their cats by keeping them enclosed 24 hours a day.

Ah, sorry, maybe I've misunderstood you, but are you calling people like me cruel for keeping my cats indoors? So by keeping them in so that they dont get killed on the road, killed by dogs, thrown about by kids/teenagers, kill small dogs/other cats/birds/wildlife (I have a huge maine coon and there have been incidents where they have killed small dogs), mess other peoples gardens, climb in the neighbours windows etc means I am mistreating my cats?

MrPirate

Absolutely not. And if one was introduced, like hell would I pay it.

Shanao wrote: »

Ah, sorry, maybe I've misunderstood you, but are you calling people like me cruel for keeping my cats indoors? So by keeping them in so that they dont get killed on the road, killed by dogs, thrown about by kids/teenagers, kill small dogs/other cats/birds/wildlife (I have a huge maine coon and there have been incidents where they have killed small dogs), mess other peoples gardens, climb in the neighbours windows etc means I am mistreating my cats?

I think what he's trying to say is keep them enclosed in small spaces rather than have them indoors. Our Norwegian Forests and our Maine Coon are indoor cats too. Largely as a reassurance to us that they won't end up on the road (we live on a busy main road in the country), but also because they just don't seem to have much interest with going outside! Our Maine Coon is actually terrified to leave the house other than braving the windowsill!

The Sweeper

The 'I live on a farm...' argument actually melts my head when it comes to the 'indoor/outdoor' cat argument.

As far as I'm concerned, farm cats are like sheep dogs. These are animals that are not family pets - they are working animals. Subsequently all bets are off on their usual domestic care. As working animals, they should be fed, watered, neutered where appropriate, wormed, flea treated and taken to the vet when they're sick, but often they sleep in outdoor accommodation, never see the inside of the house and generally live to a different set of rules than pet cats.

Farm cats keep down the influx of rodents you get attacking feed stores on a farm. Pet cats don't need to do that. Farm cats should be neutered. So should pet cats. Farm cats generally don't roam, because most farms - unless they're hobby farmers - exceed the acreage that would normally form a pet cat's roaming ground, so the farm cats live in the barn or stables, control the pests in the feed stores, might rock up for a scritch in the morning if someone's milking or mucking out, and the rest of the time they do their job.

It is a total and complete indulgence to allow a pet cat to roam, ****e in the neighbour's yard, razz up their dogs, and do all of the other things that suburban pet cats do because their owners just can't get their heads into the space where they shouldn't allow their cats to roam.

There's a whole different set of 'best practice' goals for working cats like farm or stable cats, but suburban pet owners appear to think those working cat goals apply to pet cats on a suburban block of 1/4 acre or less (far less in the case of a housing estate). Hence you get suburban pet owners going 'oh I can't keep him in' (yes you can), or 'I can't stop him roaming' (yes you can) or 'sure tiz natural' (being laminated across the road by a car is a quite unnatural end).

Should pet cats be licenced? Yes they should. How do you offer a distinction between a pet and a working cat? Try starting with the size of the land it lives on - works in other countries.

Mo60

I see we are back the usual rant about about cats roaming, with the 'experts' voiceing their usual opinions. Letting your cat out is a matter of choice.

I cannot see licencing cats in Ireland would make any difference to the current situation. In fact, I think it would make it worse. Here, some peoples' complete disregard for animals would just make them abandon their cat rather than pay for a licence.

The Sweeper

Mo60 wrote: »

I see we are back the usual rant about about cats roaming, with the 'experts' voiceing their usual opinions. Letting your cat out is a matter of choice.

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.

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.