Cat
Licensing
Alaskats Cat Club Position Paper
April
1998
Alaskats
Cat Club is against the licensing of cats within the
Municipality of Anchorage. In our view, rather than
helping cats or their caretakers, the primary effects
of mandatory cat licensing would be to penalize responsible
cats owners, put the lives of cats at risk to round
up and kill campaigns, force people taking care of feral
cats to cease their efforts, cost money, and inappropriately
expand the power and reach of government bureaucracies
and enforcement agencies.
There are a number of arguments used for licensing cats
that we would like to address. These include:
-
Dog
owners have been paying for cats at Animal Control.
Cat owners should pay their share!
-
Cat
licensing will result in more cats redeemed at shelters.
-
Cat
licensing will raise money to fund animal control
agencies.
-
Cat
licensing will make cat owners more responsible
and solve cat problems.
1.
Dog owners have been paying for cats at Animal Control.
Cat owners should pay their share!
According to the December 1997 End of Month Report
from the Anchorage Animal Control Center, 6922 dog
licenses were sold in 1997. At $15 per license this
generated $103,830 during 1997. The Municipality of
Anchorage pays the contractor, Allvest, $73,919.50
per month or $887,034 a year. Simple math shows that
dog licensing does not even pay one-eighth the cost
of animal control a year. Animal Control handles almost
twice as many dogs as cats and dog licensing doesn't
even pay for dogs at animal control. There is no way
dog owners are paying for cats! Even if cats were
licensed, there are fewer cats than dogs in the Municipality,
and the combined licensing fees would not even cover
one fourth the cost of animal control.
2.
Cat licensing will result in more cats redeemed at shelters.
Statistics from shelters across the country show otherwise.
According to a November 1993 report of the San Diego
County Animal Control Advisory Board in Los Angles,
the number of stray cats redeemed by their owners
declined by 32 percent after the licensing law went
into effect. In contrast, 63 percent of stray dogs
in San Francisco were redeemed by their owners. Fewer
than five percent of the redeemed dogs were licensed.
The stray or feral populations of cats are much higher
than the respective population of dogs. In other words,
there are a higher percentage of owned dogs and thus
more redemptions of owned dogs after impoundment.
Not being owned, stray and feral cats would not be
licensed and therefore subject to being rounded up
and killed.
A more equitable solution would be abolish dog licenses,
not institute cat licenses.
3.
Cat licensing will raise money to fund animal control
agencies.
The money collected from dog licenses goes to the
Municipality's general fund, not directly to animal
control. The same thing would happen with cat licensing
fees if they were to be implemented. Dog licensing
does not even cover one-eighth the cost of animal
control. It is the Assembly, not license fees, that
determines how much money goes to animal control.
At the same cost of licensing, currently $15 (less $5
if a vendor sells the license), licensing cats would
not cover the purchase of license tags, paperwork, personnel,
renewal reminders, enforcement, etc. Higher license
fees means less compliance, so even if license fees
were higher, there would be fewer animals licensed and
less money coming in.
4.
Cat licensing will make cat owners more responsible
and solve cat problems.
Keep in mind that a large part of the problem is unowned
(feral) cats. For owned cats, cat licensing would
only be complied with by more responsible cat owners,
not irresponsible owners who are targeted by licensing
advocates. Cat licensing only ends up punishing those
who care. It discourages those who put out food for
neighborhood strays from helping these animals for
fear of being declared the "owner" of them.
Enforcement and public education of existing laws
would go a long way in helping to solve a large number
of owned cat problems in the Municipality. It does
nothing to help the problem of feral cats.
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