Jessica Maxwell.
The story about the starving black cat which came to me for help three weeks ago didn't have a happy ending.
Despite his plight being aired in this newspaper, no one came to claim him at the Hastings SPCA shelter. He spent nine days in an isolation cage and just as he was ready to move into the rehoming room, the vet noticed that he had the treatable but highly contagious skin disease ringworm.
Unable to find anywhere to quarantine him and learning that he was maybe 8 or 9 years old I had to accept defeat and agree reluctantly that putting him to sleep was our only option.
During his final days he had food, water, a warm bed and compassionate care. He was afforded a dignified death. That has to be preferable to being homeless, unloved, cold and starving which is how I found him.
The trouble is, this cat's predicament highlights a nationwide problem. The same stressful scenario is being played out in SPCA shelters and veterinary clinics up and down the country, day in and day out, with unwanted cats and kittens being euthanised in their hundreds. He was just one of a multitude of stray cats, many feral or semi-feral which constitute a real problem in this area, one that is reaching epidemic proportions.
It's not the cats' fault. They are simply victims of neglect, having been failed by their owners. Make no mistake, the blame lies firmly on the shoulders of irresponsible people who make poor choices. Those who fail to neuter their pets, who abandon them when they move house, who don't get them micro-chipped or who simply dump them, for example. There is a loose concept of ownership where cats are involved.
Recognising that the problem of unneutered cats is more prevalent in areas of social deprivation, Hastings SPCA recently offered Flaxmere residents the opportunity to have their cats and kittens neutered for just $20 -100 cats were desexed and this successful programme will undoubtedly make a difference. Well done.
The SPCA is the entity in New Zealand which has authority to trap and euthanise feral cats and it does so under the auspices of the Animal Welfare Act. There is no legislation to allow urban councils to carry out the very unpleasant task but they can, and many do, assist their local SPCA branches.
Hastings District Council provides traps and helps with euthanasia costs if it is a community problem in town. But it needs to do much more.
Hastings SPCA's chairman, Daileen Kensington, agreed that Hastings has a huge feral and stray cat problem but explained that, as a voluntary organisation, the branch doesn't have the funds or capacity to deal with the numbers. While it has previously applied for grant funding to HDC for this purpose, its requests have been declined. Meanwhile the problem worsens.
Undeterred, SPCA currently has a realistic application pending in this year's community funding round and it is hopeful that councillors will follow the example of Napier City Council, which contracts the Hawke's Bay SPCA to trap feral cats... a mutually beneficial arrangement which is achieving remarkable results.
HB SPCA's manager, Bruce Wills, tells me that it adopts a two-pronged approach; actively trapping wild cats and hiring out loan traps together with operating a subsidised desexing programme.
The pro-active approach is working. Bruce says there has been a 10 per cent reduction in numbers of wild cats caught year on year since the programme began. It's now down to around 200 cats annually.
As Bruce points out, these feral cats don't have happy lives. There's a lot of misery. Many are unhealthy and malnourished while unwanted kittens die of starvation or disease.
I know myself that cats which are dumped in the country fare little better as they are often shot by farmers who view them as disease-bearing pests.
The Hawke's Bay Regional Council has recently initiated the multi-stakeholder funded Cape to City Project, a predator trapping programme stretching from Cape Kidnappers to town. One participating farmer told me that 15 feral cats had been trapped on his property in only a matter of weeks. He was glad to see the back of them and had already noticed an increase in birdlife around his property.
So what is the solution? The Local Government Association is looking at putting a national strategy on cat management together but currently there is no supporting legislation for enforcing local-authority bylaws.
Campbell Leckie, the land services manager at HBRC, says it's a matter of balancing people's rights to own cats as pets with the reality that feral cats are pests which cause significant environmental and economic damage. Ownership brings with it responsibilities.
While a collaborative approach will mitigate the problem, it is up to individual owners to do the right thing. They need to neuter their pets, get them micro-chipped and actually care for them - not toss them out on the streets or on to farmland to fend for themselves. That's not fair on the cat or the community.
Could it be time to license cats?
- Jessica Maxwell is an animal welfare advocate and chairman of lobby group WATCHDOG!
- Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz
Burton arrived as an American import. Forty years later, he's honoured as a Hawks legend.