CFA Legislative Group: Information that cat fanciers need in today’s legislative climate.

Social issues drive legislation. When a problem is defined within the social context, elected officials are called upon to either pass laws or to institute programs that will solve the problem.

Society's attitudes toward cats have been focused in recent years on the number of homeless cats that end up in shelters, and on cats that are nuisances to people. Still another emerging issue has been the perceived impact that cats have on wildlife - primarily birds. The Cat Fanciers' Association has studied these issues and found that incorrect information is often a driving force for laws that will not only fail to solve the identified problem, but that can have a deleterious impact on the welfare of cats.

Test your knowledge of some of these issues with this brief True/False quiz. Answers and explanations appear at the end.

Answer True or False to each question

1. Approximately 20-25% of the cats relinquished by their owners at shelters are of a recognizable breed.

2. Cat licensing and/or cat confinement ("leash") laws lead to inhumane trap-and-kill policies to eradicate unowned and feral cats.

3. Replacing the term "pet owner" in state and local laws with the term "pet guardian" will lead to better treatment of cats and dogs.

4. Legislators can be best influenced by a large number of form letters sent from all over the country.

5. A cat breeder who has clean facilities and healthy cats has nothing to fear from legislation that would impose a breeder permit with inspections.

6. A terrible pet overpopulation crisis is the cause of approsimately 6 million unwanted puppies and kittens being euthanized in United States shelters.

Answers:

1. False. While shelters try their best, problems with incorrect identification lead to tremendously inflated figures. Best estimates come from the American Humane Association Shelter Reporting Study, which places the number of cats of a recognizable breed at 0.9%, and from the growing breed rescue organizations made up of cat fanciers and clubs that are knowledgeable about breeds. These groups say that the number of cats in shelters that might have come from a pedigreed breeding program to be far less than even the 1% figure. Breed rescue groups are working to see to it that no cats of their breed will be euthanized, and are removing the cats to rehome them.

2. True. Conventional wisdom is that when feral and unowned cats become a problem, jurisdictions can pass licensing laws or cat confinement ("leash") laws to provide a "tool" by which to round up cats that are either not wearing collar and tags or which are "at large" in violation of the law. Common means involve humane traps. Both owned and unowned cats are swept up in these trapping programs. By definition, unowned cats have no owner to either license or confine them, and frequently they are unsocialized and therefore unadoptable. Even owned cats, when trapped, can appear to be feral and lash out at their captors. More than 80% of these cats will be euthanized. CFA supports Trap/Neuter/Return (TNR) programs to reduce the numbers of freeroaming/unowned cats in communities.

3. False. The guardian concept is based on the premise that breeding, selling, and ultimately the very owning of cats and dogs is exploitation of animals, equated with slavery. Use of the term "guardian" reflects the philosophy that an individual does not have ownership control - that an animal can be removed if the courts or others determine that it is in its best interests. Legal obligations of a "guardian" generally extend beyond those of a normal owner of property. Human guardians can be accountable to the state for how they tend to their wards. Owners of pets could be subject to legal liabilities that extend far beyond those that currently exist, and pets could become wards of the state. Instead of better treatment for animals, most legal scholars anticipate a morass of litigation and restrictions on the relationships of people with their pets.

4. False. Pet owners are becoming more savvy. They are recognizing that individual liberties and their pet ownership rights are being slowly eroded by the push to pass legislation that suits an agenda, but is neither in the best interests of the citizens or their animals. These owners are standing up to be counted, and are holding their lawmakers accountable. Experienced lobbyists say that personally written letters, particularly by constituents, which are either mailed or faxed will have far more impact on legislators than will form letters from outside the lawmaker's constituency. Pet owners can look to national organizations, such as CFA, for aid in writing letters to their lawmakers on behalf of their constituents, which also have impact, and which can provide the lawmakers with current, factual information on the pros and cons of various legislative approaches.

5. False. Few local or state bureaucracies can understand or appreciate the individual dedication of the responsible cat fancier/breeder. Business permits and the methods by which they are implemented and enforced are not appropriate to the hobby breeder who raises his kittens in a private residence. They are, instead, an unwarranted invasion of privacy, subject to bureaucratic whim on animal number threshholds and inspection and standards of care criteria. Inspectors can even spread disease as they go from one home to another. When faced with these problems, and the associated high fees, most hobby breeders will abandon their avocation, thus depriving the public of its best source of healthy, home-raised pedigreed pets.

6. False. Shelter euthanasia has been dramatically reduced over the last 10-15 years. The exact numbers are not known, because many shelters still do not keep rudimentary data on intakes and disposition of animals. CFA is a founding member of The National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy which estimates 3 million dogs and cats per year currently are euthanized. The National Council is working to determine the root causes and solutions for animals being relinquished to shelters by their owners and other community problems. Further, it is rare for puppies or kittens to be euthanized unless they are sick or unweaned litters from feral cat populations. The vast majority of shelter euthanized animals are teenaged or adult dogs or cats with behavior problems, or pets that are old, sick or temperamentally unsuited for adoption.

Anna Sadler, August 2002

To correspond with the CFA Legislative Committee, please send email to legislation@cfa.org

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