Hamish MacLean investigates whether local cat bylaws are dead in the water.
Oamaru animal-lover Kate Ferris has a question about the Waitaki District Council’s proposed rules for cat owners.
The council’s draft general bylaw, designed to stop "various forms of nuisance", allows for three companion cats per rateable property. An exemption would be possible if cats were desexed, vaccinated, microchipped and registered.
Ms Ferris and partner Brett Irvine have four cats - Ash (3), Storm, Oliver, and Zazu (all 5) - on their 3000sqm North Oamaru property.
They also have three rabbits in a hutch, and three dogs, she said.
All four cats were desexed and vaccinated, but unlike their dogs, the cats were not microchipped. And if microchipping and registering a cat was part of being a responsible pet owner, should all cats be microchipped and registered?
"If you’re going to microchip ... all owners should microchip," she said.
Microchipping cats was simply not something she had thought about when she brought the cats home from her vet.
The council reviewed submissions on its general bylaw, on Wednesday, and though it deals with a broad range of rules in the district, cats drew by far the most mention in the six verbal, 30 written and 28 social media submissions.
Cr Jim Hopkins said he was "surprised by the overall tenor of the submissions" and expected more "pushback from cat owners".
Submitters including, Jessi Morgan, of the Morgan Foundation, Chloe Searle, who is the chairwoman of the Waitaki branch of Forest & Bird, and the Predator Free New Zealand Trust’s Rebecca Bell wrote in support of mandatory microchipping of pet cats.
Written submissions called for establishing a lower limit for pet cats, measures to prohibit establishing or maintaining cat colonies, differentiating between "pet, stray and feral cats", developing processes for dealing with strays, and considering zoning "no cats" or "contained cats" near reserves or ecologically important areas.
At the end of July, Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) voted to adopt a policy to lobby the Government to adopt the final New Zealand National Cat Management Strategy, which could result in regulations similar to a bylaw in Wellington where cats over 12 weeks old have to be microchipped, and Cr Hopkins noted the Waitaki bylaw could be surpassed by more strict regulations shortly after it was approved.
The draft national cat strategy, a 161-page document created by the New Zealand Veterinary Association (NZVA); NZVA Companion Animal Veterinarians; New Zealand Companion Animal Council; Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; Morgan Foundation; and LGNZ with the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Department of Conservation as technical advisory members, promotes the introduction of nationwide mandatory microchipping and registration.
Waitaki Mayor Gary Kircher said the council believed the Government needed to take "a leading role" on the issue - especially with the goal of being predator-free by 2050 - but the council was "enabled" by law to control activities affecting neighbourhoods.
"Inevitably people look to councils when they’ve got problems with cats," he said.
"They look at councils to provide solutions, we’ve got that obligation, we are the ones who can do something about it. We get stuck in the middle between those who own cats and those who suffer the consequences of them."
The council was not one of the seven councils that had worked with the Dunedin City Council and Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull’s remit to LGNZ, but he had supported Mr Cull’s remit, he said.
Mr Cull, who was elected to head LGNZ at the meeting when the remit was passed into policy, said despite media perception that support for the remit had been "razor thin" with only 51% voting in its favour, only 35% of councils opposed it, and the rest abstained from voting.
The Waitaki district’s pursuit of its own cat regulations was not at odds with LGNZ’s efforts to lobby the Government to adopt a national cat strategy, he said.
"What we don’t want to have is ... local government recognising there needs to be certain things done and going to central government and saying: ‘Well, we won’t do anything until you do’," Mr Cull said.
"What we have recognised is there are occasions - a few - where we do have some powers and if we see a problem in our communities and our communities are supportive of them, then we have a responsibility to act."
