Claw and order: Are cats villains or victims in the war on feral animals?

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Humans and cats have been friends for thousands of years, at least since the ancient Egyptians first took them in and made them allies. That is, until this month, when 12,500 kilometres away from where that relationship began, one species waged war on the other.

“We are declaring war on feral cats. And today, we are setting up our battle plan to win that war,” Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek was quoted as saying in a press release announcing her government’s new cat abatement plan to protect native wildlife.

Tanya Plibersek watches a demonstration of a feral cat trap.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“When domesticated cats are living inside our homes, snuggled up at the end of our beds, we rightly love them. But feral cats are the opposite of adorable. They are walking, stalking, ruthless killers.”

But it isn’t just feral cats the minister has her eyes on. Pets were part of the problem too, Plibersek said. There was “no difference” between a feral cat and pet cat that went out at night and killed native animals, she later told a radio interviewer. That’s why the federal government thinks councils could have more power to restrict pet numbers, ban cats outdoors and impose nighttime curfews to prevent native species extinctions.

That stance was welcomed by researchers who are trying to protect Australia’s threatened species. But the war cry from Canberra has alarmed some cat lovers who heard in Plibersek’s comments a government minister preying on a target that can’t speak for itself.

While Plibersek is not the first minister to declare feral cats the enemy – former environment minister Josh Frydenberg did the same in 2017 – she has gone a step further in singling out pets. According to the government’s plan, there are an estimated 5.3 million pet cats in Australia that kill more than 500 million native animals each year.

Professor Sarah Legge from the Biodiversity Council, who contributed to the draft, said it “recognises more strongly than in the past that pet cats are part of the story”.

“Domestic cats hunt wildlife, and there’s always the risk that unwanted litters end up leaking into the feral cat population,” she said. “I think 24/7 [containment of cats indoors] is the way to go. It solves the wildlife problem and is much better for the welfare of cats … Cats are one of the worst invasive species. We can’t not act.”

Of Australia’s 29 mammal species that have gone extinct, cats have been the main contributor to 20 of them. There are about 200 more animals on Australia’s list of threatened species list that are vulnerable to predation.

The bilby is one of the Austrlaian species endangered by feral cats.

But animal welfare advocates argue the government’s plan doesn’t address the more pressing problem in urban areas, which is that stray cats that are not de-sexed and have no one to contain them. There’s also scepticism about the will and ability of local governments to enforce the Commonwealth’s proposed solutions – keeping cats indoors, a curfew or restrictions on cat ownership – as well as owners’ ability to meet those conditions.

Kristina Vesk, head of the Cat Protection Society, said she found Plibersek’s media release “quite frightening”. “I find the cheap use of headline grabbing, but also really violent language, dangerous and unhelpful,” she said.

“All it does is send a subliminal message that cats don’t matter, they don’t have moral standing in the world, they deserve what’s coming to them. They’ve been turned into demons and monsters.

“We’re making cats criminals when they’re the victims, when people are dumping them and leaving them to fend for themselves.”

“Cats are just being themselves. They’re not working from a model of vengeance against the minister for the environment. A lot of them do nothing to anyone except give them companionship, comfort and love. For some people, they’re a reason to get out of bed in the morning and face the world. To attack them like that is really uncalled-for. In conservation, there’s no need to name call and demonise any species.”

Asked about her rhetoric, Plibersek said: “This isn’t an attack on Fluffy. This is a defence of Australia’s precious wildlife… [Cats] are one of the reasons Australia is the mammal extinction capital of the world. If we don’t act now, our native animals don’t stand a chance.”

Australian newspaper headlines have decried “killer cats” since at least the 1970s.

A Sydney Morning Herald article from August 1976 raises fears about cats killing native wildlife.Credit: Fairfax Media

“If they’ve been declaring war for that long, clearly that’s failed,” Vesk said. “But it’s cheaper and easier to [keep declaring war], because we’re not the mining lobby, are we? When the landscape is just being burned, logged and mined, the loss of habitat is extreme. We can have a pile of dead cats on a pile of dead country, but that doesn’t achieve anything.”

Legge, however, said there was no point squabbling over which factors wreak the most destruction on biodiversity. “We need to tackle them all. Just because one seeks to improve cat management, it doesn’t mean you allow land clearing,” she said.

Emeritus Professor Jacquie Rand, executive director of the Australian Pet Welfare Foundation, said the biggest issue with the government plan is that “most free roaming cats have no owner to contain them”. “It might seem obvious that mandating containment would work. But our data published this year shows just 5 per cent of cats entering pounds and shelters are reclaimed, 95 per cent don’t have an identifiable owner to claim them,” she said.

Dorlene Haidar rescues and rehomes cats from the street.Credit: Rhett Wyman

In many Australian suburbs, there are groups of volunteers who spend their nights rescuing stray cats and socialising them to find new homes. Dorlene Haidar is one such person; she currently shares her home in Punchbowl in Sydney’s west with 20 rescue cats. Haidar takes cats off the street herself and pays to have them de-sexed and cared for. She estimates she’s spent up to $30,000 out of her pocket having street cats sterilised.

“That’s what I work for,” said Haidar, who has run for local council as an Animal Justice Party candidate. “We need to have stronger penalties for people not de-sexing, and people dumping cats on the street – that’s where the problem is coming from.”

Another local rescuer, Tania Katsanis, said all levels of government had left individuals, vets and charities to deal with unowned cats in cities and allowed local cat populations to boom.

“The thing that’s starting to bug me is [urban cats] are not ‘feral’, they’re stray and abandoned. We’re making cats criminals when they’re the victims, when people are dumping them and leaving them to fend for themselves,” she said.

“You can put as many laws in place to restrict cats from wandering, but there aren’t enough rangers to go around and slow down the breeding cycle. It’s going to be a hard one to police. On the list of things that law enforcement have to do, I don’t think chasing cats and whether they’re out of their home is at the top of their list.”

Rand also thinks there are other ways to deal with the issue. “Community cat programs based on free de-sexing of cats in areas with high numbers of free-roaming cats are very effective in reducing complaints, reducing free-roaming cats being impounded, reducing the number of healthy cats being killed and reducing council costs,” she said.

Chief executive of the Cat Protection Society, Kristina Vesk, is concerned about violent language being used about cats.Credit: James Brickwood

“In these programs, most people feeding one to two stray cats will take ownership of them if the cat is de-sexed, microchipped and registered for free.”

And while Rand does support restricting cats to their owner’s property, she said it’s often not so simple – particularly if someone has a “door dasher” cat who is hard to rein in.

“The reality is 30 per cent of Australians live in rental properties, and containment systems are often expensive. Mandated containment criminalises cat ownership for people on low incomes and in rental properties.”

Then there’s the social consequence of declaring war on a beloved animal. “People are upset by this attack. People who love cats and tend to them feel like they’re under assault,” Vesk said.

“Some people who are socially isolated, or not as well-off, they consider the relationship with cats to be meaningful. If they can’t afford these things [such as de-sexing and containment], they’re going to be very distressed.”

Still, Vesk agreed the issue can be dealt with if the language is sensitive and communities are consulted. “The ACT took a really long view of this some time ago, started talking to the population and phased it in,” she said.

In many Australian suburbs, there are groups of volunteers who spend their nights rescuing stray cats and socialising them to find new homes.

ACT Environment Minister Vassarotti explained that the territory introduced a 10-year plan in 2021 that required all cats born after July 2022 to be contained inside all the time. People also need to register their cats and have them de-sexed.

“The reasons for that are twofold: welfare of the cat and welfare of natural wildlife,” Vassarotti said. “There’s really significant research that suggests [indoor] cats live longer, are less likely to be injured or susceptible to illness … About half of cat owners contain their cat anyway.

“Compliance and enforcement is an important part of the plan, but our focus has been in this first period around education, particularly because we have the grandfathered arrangement, we are working with the community to understand their obligation.”

But the expectation is that repeat offending owners won’t be able to ignore the rules. And there are penalties, including fines and criminal prosecution, for serious cases.

“A bit over 12 months down the track, there’s a good understanding and acceptance of the plan and the role we all need to play,” Vassarotti said.

“It recognises cats are an important part of many people’s families, they are much loved, and we’re trying to bring a strategy that recognises that and supports responsible cat ownership while protecting this wonderful environment that we get to be in every day.”

Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner, Fiona Fraser, said it was important the federal government takes a leadership role in the space. “Our speciality isn’t pet cats, but they are part of the feral cat story, because feral cats start somewhere … It’s fairly diabolic, the impact they’re having at the moment,” she said.

“Cats are important for people’s happiness, people live longer when they have a pet. It’s about people still having their pets but managing them in a better way.”

Fraser said the big shift will be towards full-time containment, which she argued some councils had already done well by giving people the resources to build external enclosures such as outdoor cages that give cats space to run around and facilities to play on.

“That’s when it really makes a difference on the number of animals that are killed. It’s really important [that] they’re 24/7 curfews, not just nighttime curfews. If you lock your cat up at night, they’re just going to hunt different animals in the day,” she said.

“When it comes to managing invasive species, it’s important to pursue all the options you’ve got available.”

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