COM 0022.077 2004-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

only add to the number of cats killed. CLAIM: Cat Licensing will help raise the status of cats. In our view this claim is on a par with the suggesting that licensing poor people or the homeless will help raise their "status." Of course, cat licensing proponents aren't making a comparison to people, but to dogs: if cats are licensed like dogs they will apparently enjoy the same "status" as dogs. Unfortunately, dog licensing didn't confer any beneficial "status" on canines: it was and is a tool for protecting livestock, enforcing rabies laws, and ridding the public streets of the perceived threat posed by unowned, free-roaming dogs. Indeed, since 1933 California dog licensing laws have explicitly authorized the impoundment of unlicensed dogs, and millions of dogs have been impounded and killed by animal control agencies throughout the state as a result of these mandatory licensing laws. This is the precedent to which proponents of cat licensing appeal when they claim that licensing will raise the "status" of cats. We doubt, however, whether cats would choose such a status for themselves. They might well prefer to retain the unlicensed status they now share with humans. And the dogs may want to join them. CLAIM: Cat licensing will result in more cats being redeemed at shelters. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that cat redemptions are just as likely, if not more likely, to decline once voluntary cat identification efforts are replaced with a coercive licensing mandate. In Los Angeles County, for instance, the number of stray cats redeemed by their owners was reported to be down 32% following implementation of mandatory laws. Proponents have tended to ignore evidence like this, and instead point to the fact that dogs, who have been subject to licensing laws for years, enjoy higher redemption rates than cats. But dogs differ from cats in many ways, and there is no reason to think licensing is the factor that results in the higher redemption rate for dogs. Indeed, San Francisco 63% of the stray dogs at the City's Animal Care and Control Department were redeemed by their owners in the 1993-94 fiscal year. Yet less that 4% of the dogs impounded during that time were licensed. It seems clear, then, that factors other than licensing are responsible for the high redemption rate for dogs. The most obvious reason for the difference between dog and cat redemption rates is the fact that a much higher proportion of the dogs who are impounded are "owned" in the first place. Few dogs are found, for instance, in the type of feral or doorstep colonids that thousands of cats call home, nor are there many unowned neighborhood dogs. Since most dogs impounded are likely to be "owned" by someone, it makes sense that many more would be redeemed. And since a much smaller proportion of impounded cats are "owned" - a Santa Clara study estimated that less than 9% of all stray cats handled by that county's animal control agency were owned - it makes sense that far fewer cats are redeemed. A licensing program obviously can't change that, unless, of course, it is accomplished by concentrated efforts to round up and kill all unowned cats in a community. CLAIM: Cat licensing will help reduce the number of stray and abandoned cats. The only way cat licensing will reduce the number of stray and abandoned cats is if it is enforced by rounding up unlicensed cats and taking them to the local animal control agency where the vast majority will be killed. And this, we fear, is exactly what will happen. Many individuals and groups openly advocate for cat control measures like licensing as a vehicle for round-up-and-kill measures. And even animal control agencies that disclaim any intention of initiating round-up-and-kill programs will have to respond to complaints about cats from these individuals and groups, which will inevitably result in cats being rounded up and killed. z