This is an interesting article on Spay-Neuter. Apparently, Florida tried to pass a mandatory Spay-Neuter bill. As most of you know, this would be a bad idea because it would just mean more money is wasted trying to enforce the bill. The money could of course instead be used to sterilise more cats.
People who cannot afford to sterilise will not be able to pay the fine should they be caught for having unsterilised cats of course. It would be better to allow people more resources to get their cats done.
It's interesting that in the US, they estimate that 82% of pet cats are sterilised. I strongly believe that if resources are made available to people cheaply, that more people will sterilise their pet cats. On the other hand, an estimated 3% of community cats are done. It's interesting to note that most kittens born are believed to be born to community cats - so that's where the problem lies.
4 comments:
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How does this apply to proposed compulsory sterilisation of home cats as a condition for HDB to remove the ban?
Would there be a surge in abandonment IF HDB agrees to removal the ban? I guess there would be as with the regulations on the dogs.
Kaixin - hope they find a home.
Singapore Community Cats - I think the HDB ban is different in the sense that a mandatory spay-neuter law (and the accompanying fines) don't really give people much of a reason to sterilise. After all, enforcement is usually pretty low - and the fines are usually monetary.
On the other hand, with the HDB, you could technically lose your HOME. If compliance is made easy, I believe that the many fence sitters will choose to sterilise because the penalties are much worse.
Of course, at the same time, making sure that sterilisation is affordable is important.
Having said that, I am sure there will be some people who will choose to dump the cats. However, I'm pretty sure that many of these people are the ones who aren't sterilising and are dumping already.
Another important benefit is that right now, it is almost impossible to enforce the law - and the responsible and irresponsible are all lumped together. So what is the incentive to be responsible?
With people legally allowed to keep cats, HDB can then focus on irresponsible owners and people have even more of an incentive to be responsible owners. It actually will have the potential to make HDB's job easier - and enforcement more effective.
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