KATE EMERY: Cat v dog double standard needs to change

Cat and dog owners love to spar over which is smarter, when the real question is whether cat or dog owners have more going on upstairs.

That’s easy: cat owners.

Before the pit-bull parents come for me with a choke chain, let me make my point, which is this: if dog owners were so smart, they wouldn’t tolerate the double standard that victimises them.

Not only is this double standard dogs v cats but it’s Sydney v Melbourne. More on that in a bit.

Dog owners must keep their pets at home unless accompanied, leash them in public and carry their poo like the modern equivalent of King Henry VIII’s Groom of the Stool (don’t Google it, you’ll thank me later).

Meanwhile, cat owners are getting away with murder. About 110 of them each year, which is one estimate of how many native animals are killed by every Fluffy, Coco or Mr Muggles.

Most pet cats are allowed to roam freely, crapping in the flowerbeds of perfect strangers, spreading disease, starting fights and generally living the life of a serial killer in a small town where everyone leaves their doors unlocked and to whom the cops have decided to turn a blind eye.

As a cat owner it pains me to say that this needs to change.

Calls for laws that would confine pet cats at home have been growing louder for years but nobody wants to do anything about it, possibly because cat people can be, well, let’s go with “passionate”.

Unfortunately, the case for keeping cats indoors or in an enclosed outside space is compelling.

Pet cats are estimated to kill 390-500 million animals every year in Australia, driving native species to extinction.

Just as Ted Bundy charmed victims to their death, cats have convinced us they’re not ruthless killers based largely off aesthetics.

My own cat looks like the cutest Ewok in Return of the Jedi. But I have known him to dismember a dove with all the emotion of a mafia boss ordering a hit.

When I said that nobody wants to do anything about this, that wasn’t true.

It’s just that the Venn diagram of those with the power to do something and those with the will to do so is practically a figure eight.

At the local government level some councils have introduced “cat curfews” that require cats to be kept at home some or all of the time.

However, that is happening almost exclusively in Victoria, where about half of councils are estimated to have introduced some restrictions, because in NSW the State’s laws actively prevent councils from introducing their own cat containment laws. The same is true in WA.

As a result, while the City of Sydney “strongly recommends” cats are confined to their owner’s property at all times, there’s nothing they can do about it.

As a result, most cat owners treat that recommendation like the “serving suggestion” on the side of a tub of ice-cream.

That’s despite one estimate from the Australian National University that roaming pet cats kill 66 million native animals each year in Sydney alone.

The prospect of bringing in a ban on roaming cats overnight isn’t realistic, even if the NSW Government was jonesing to put every cat-loving voter offside.

For one thing, it would surely lead to a spike in cats being dumped by owners unable or unwilling to countenance a litter tray in the bathroom or turning their backyard or balcony into a “catio”.

But a staged introduction that begins with new cat owners would be both more palatable and a good start. The ACT offers a decent blueprint to how this could work: its law requiring cats to be contained at home applies only to moggies born after July 2022.

Someone, somewhere, reading this column is begging me to mention feral cats and it’s true that feral cats kill far more native animals than pet cats do. That’s why State governments around the country are running massive baiting programs.

Suggesting pet cats should be left alone while the feral menace is dealt with is like suggesting cops prosecute only male killers, who account for most homicides, and give lady murderers a free pass.

Don’t let a pretty face fool you: a killer is a killer.