The people of Sherbrooke and indeed the cats of Sherbrooke are adjusting and so is John Groves
whose job it is to enforce the new laws.
Yes Stuart that's fine I'm on my way now.
I'm the officer in charge of the local law section.
My staff and I go out and trap cats, collect dogs, deal with injured native wildlife.
Lots and lots of different aspects of local laws we deal with.
As I said before if you have a cat in the Sherbrooke area you're required to identify it
and register it and keep it indoors between dusk and dawn.
At the moment the council is not issuing infringement notices but within a few months
they will be sending out $100 fines to those people whose cats are breaking the law.
Yeah there has been quite an amount of resistance from various groups
that seem to feel that registering their cats and infringement on their civil liberties.
My cats have adjusted to the by-law by doing absolutely nothing other than normal.
They have their door that they go out, they come in after they've been out
and they don't go out at night any more than they particularly want to
but they have been going out all their life and you can't stop a cat
that has been used to this.
You will never stop a cat it'll tear the house to bits, it'll tear you to bits.
If you try to lock it up and it's not used to doing so so that's impossible.
Well we've heard that old furphy before and frankly we have no time for it
and neither does RSPCA spokesman Hugh Wirth.
Well the first thing we've got to do is overcome this ridiculous position
that's espoused by mostly politicians and their supporters
that nothing can be done to control cats.
What rubbish you can control cats and you can control them very easily.
Of all the animals we own as pets cats are probably the most adaptable.
It's very easy to train a cat to stay indoors.
They don't have to be confined to the house.
That's all you've got to do is say right.
At dusk I'll feed my cat.
I feed my cat in its bedroom wherever that happens to be in a shed or the garage
and I shut the door.
So we know that something has to be done and that we can do it
but can we convince the pet owners of today, that's you and me, to change their attitudes?
Yes certainly we've had some people do a complete turn around
people that were very vocally against the legislation.
I was very outspoken because I was angry and it was only later that I discovered
the nature of the wildlife in the forest and I researched for myself
and it helped me to change my ideas rather radically myself.
They've got the run of the house.
Later on we'll make them a cat garden.
Once we got the run in position I was absolutely amazed.
We had birds on the roof.
We had birds in the front garden and birds sitting on the ground.
Yes I think they're coping very well.
I don't know who's enjoying the extra attention more, the cats or the humans.
It goes both ways.
Confining cats needn't be cruel and by the way cats which have been confined
actually live longer. Cat runs can be made interesting and comfortable
and some people actually believe that you can breed the hunting instinct out of cats.
Pretty radical solution isn't it?
And it's the simple old-fashioned method.
Choose two parangial cats with the temperament you want,
mate them together and choose the best progeny.
And this is where some fundamental research would be useful to try and see
which characteristics in the human centered life will substitute for some of those need to hunt
and need to satisfy the desire to hunt and to kill because there's stalking
and there's the actual kill and there's all sorts of things in this business of hunting.
It's not just a single thing so it's obviously not a single gene
and it's probably a lot of genes.
It's probably going to take around about 10 years.
That's if you're talking about producing a population of cats that are very low on their hunting
desires. Obviously if you had the resources then you could start with sufficient cats
and have a big pool to select from initially.
I think you could probably do it in five years or so.
Now you may think that Truda Strayed is talking nonsense but she does have a PhD in science.
She is a leading expert in genetics and she previously predicted that she could breed
spotted cats.
Well the spotted missed cat is testament to the fact that she did exactly what she said she would do
but her solution will take some years.
In the meantime how are things at Sherbrooke getting on?
I think it's only a question of time before people get used to the idea.
It's not such a bad thing.
It's not such a great problem that we're asking them to overcome.
I feel guilty that I've got a cat and I know that I shouldn't.
I don't want to get rid of her now just because I live in Sherbrooke
and I just think if I'm responsible I put a bell on her and I register her.
I have her spayed and I keep her in at night.
I think that's fair enough but I don't think it needs to go any further than that.
Do you?
So what's your solution?
Well I can tell you this if you think it's someone else's problem you're wrong.
This one is up to all of us.
Our problems of course are not really animal problems they're people problems.
This animal is an owned cat.
If the owner was complying with the legislation it wouldn't be here.
We wouldn't have to impound it.
We wouldn't have the problems with the wildlife.
If the legislation was nationwide across Australia
we could save a heap of wildlife.
In the opinion of the RSPCA all you have to do is change the current dog acts to include cats.
Once you have done that you can legally register those cats that are properly owned by those who want to own cats.
That then entitles those cats that are not registered to be picked up by the authorities
and not just the RSPCA but local government as well.
Those animals that are sick, injured, too old or otherwise have been so neglected that they're in poor health
will be humanely put down in contrast to what happens at the moment where they starve to death,
die of their various diseases, are run over by cars or even more regrettably made a plaything
and a cruel plaything of young people and others who are anti-cat.
No one makes you have a cat, a dog, a bird, anything that you have to be totally responsible for.
So that if you don't want to be 100% responsible for it, don't have it.
If you don't want to have it vaccinated, if you don't want to have it desexed, don't have it.
If you don't want to take a dog for a walk, don't have it.
If you don't want to confine your cat at night, don't have it.
So there you are, the great Australian cat, pet, companion, fringe dweller, urban terrorist
and feral killer all rolled up into one furry little ball.
An animal which is outside the law in all areas of Australia except for Sherbrooke Shire.
And an animal that we don't understand much about once it's stepped out of the doors of our house.
What is the basic issue here? Well it's one of democracy. Australia is a democracy.
Some people hate cats and surely they have a right not to have cats from someone else's place
wandering through their backyards. Someone has a right to have pets like birds without
someone else's cat killing their pets. If people have little children in a sandpit,
surely they have a right not to have someone else's cats come and defecate in that sandpit.
Equally our native animals, surely they too have some rights. After all, they were here a long time
before both cats and white people. Two-thirds of Australians don't have cats and ironically those
people, the vast majority, don't have any rights at the moment. The whole situation just doesn't make sense.
If you'd like to become a more responsible cat owner, why not write into Burke's backyard for
our fact sheet on cats. It's called Cats and address it to PO Box 929 Willoughby, New South Wales 2068.
And don't forget to include a business-sized stamped self-addressed envelope.
Not trouble, but he's staying in.
People having to train themselves to say bring the cats in at a night time, to also be conscious of
what the cats can do. I think there's going to have to be an education program by councils
or by the National Parks and Wildlife or somebody like that. The truth of the matter is that
predation is an extremely powerful factor in the environment and it's taken us a very long
while to wake up to it. I do feel a cat should have a tag the same as a dog so that it can be
identified that it's a pet or it's a feral cat. We humans domesticated the cat. It is up to us
humans then to do something about a problem that we started. We are responsible. It's a matter of
changing attitudes in terms of how we view cats in our environment. They've got positive values as
companions. They can have positive values for wildlife if we also change the way in which we
keep them. I can see Australia as one-sixth of the world continents. It gives us the responsibility of
one-sixth of the world's wildlife. We're the only continent with marsupials and they're unique to us
and if we don't take care of the environment and these particular creatures the whole world will
lose and even future generations will look down on us as quite contemptible.
Well that's it. It's Huru from me but one last thing. Please don't put the cat out.
Thank you.