Toronto council wants to introduce cat leash laws but there are better things to do

NEWS AND COMMENT: Toronto city council (the economic and community development committee) has voted by a show of hands to support a motion for a bylaw change to make it obligatory for outdoor cats to be on a lead. 

It's not yet received final approval. The council is scheduled to debate the issue in two weeks. The reason? The usual ones. To protect cats and protect wildlife. It is just another story among many of methods to confine cats when they are outside. There is a world trend in the West i.e. developed countries, for this alteration in the human-to-cat relationship.

Beautiful Toronto. Photo: Image by Miguel Barrera from Pixabay.

However, the best article on the topic comes from Mike Strobel writing for the TORONTO SUN. He lives with a Norwegian Forest cat and he does not like this proposed bylaw. His reason is that there are better things to be doing. 

He complains that in Toronto there's a lot of pressing problems that need to be fixed including gridlock on the roads, street drugs, carjackings, garbage, gunfire, construction chaos, random thuggery et cetera. He's trying to make that point that the city council should be prioritised improvements in the amenity of the city, in reducing crime et cetera rather than trying to introduce a law which I would argue is going to be hard to enforce.

In fact, it may be impossible to enforce effectively. Firstly, you've got to know where all the domestic cats are in Toronto. Are they all micro-chipped? Can all the domestic cats in Toronto be identified? Because if not I don't think you can enforce this law. 

RELATED: Cats: Leash Laws, Licenses, Regulated Feeding Outside, Government Funded TNR.

Let's say the law is successfully introduced. A domestic cat goes outside. The cat is not microchip. An official spots the cat and takes him to a pound. The owner does not look for his cat. That might happen and it is not doing anything to protect wildlife or to protect cats. And most cats are outside at night. Who's going to spot them? An army of council officials wandering the streets at night?

It would seem that the only surefire way of enforcing a bylaw which makes it obligatory to take your cat out on a lead if they want to go out is by having every cat registered with the local authority with up-to-date details and to employ Toronto residents as spies to spy on their neighbour.

RELATED: Leash laws against free-roaming cats means death for Murfreesboro shelter cats.

Mr Strobel think that it might be a diversion from City Hall's failures. This, by the way, is a form of "dead cat strategy" which I have written about in another article. The strategy describes diversionary tactics to take attention away from failures.

Strobel drove through Toronto the other day and he saw tents under the Gardiner and in neighbourhood parks. He saw junkies, needles and crack pipes "around the 'safe injection' site at Dundas Square". He was stuck in traffic; "paralysed by orange cones". He is shocked by "a rash of daylight carjackings".

But he "noted exactly zero felonious felines"! He saw "no cat poop on the sidewalk or puddles in the elevator". In short, he did not see a cat problem in Toronto but he did see other problems which should be prioritised by the City Council.

City of Fremantle, Western Australia, proposes that outside cats must be leashed

The councillors of the city of Fremantle in Western Australia want to ban freeroaming domestic cats. They will have to be on a leash if they have their way. Soon cats could be prohibited from all city-owned and managed properties. This is one more step in the pressure being applied by legislators in Australia to domestic cat ownership in order to constrain free movement and protect native wildlife. 

Photo: Pixabay. This is the kind of cat you'd keep on a leash without laws to make you do it as she is beatiful.

There is a gradual, insidious almost, expansion of the concept of limiting the freedoms of domestic cats and restricting domestic cat caretaking. I am not against it as long as cat welfare is also dealt with. Constraining cats can lead to bored cats and a lack of stimulation. This can lead to health problems.

In this instance, the motion for the change in the local law was put forward by Councillor Adin Lang. It was backed at a meeting this week according to The Daily Mail. Domestic cats will also have to be on a leash when in other areas such as bushland areas, verge gardens and other areas considered to be wildlife refuges. 

The proposal is also to prohibit cats from going onto roads. I find that very peculiar but it is the report. They intend to amend an existing law, the Cat Management Local Law 2020.

Adin Lang wants, it seems to me, the same rules applying to cats that are in operation for dogs. Dogs can't roam around freely and he wants the same thing for cats. Back in 1970s dogs were allowed to roam freely but it's been very different for a very long time.

RELATED: Walking your cat on a leash to explore and stimulate. A lifestyle to aspire to?

The proposed law will also help protect cats and keep them safer. I'm told that there are 750 cats registered in Fremantle. That implies that there is an obligation on cat owners to register cats in that city. How successful is that? This is a low number. My research immediately confirmed that domestic cat registration plus microchipping and sterilisation is obligatory in Fremantle. Breach of the ordinance results in $5,000 fine per item.

The proposed amendment to the law will be drafted and then be put to the council. They might seek feedback from the community before they try and turn it into a law. It could still be disallowed by the State Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation.

RELATED: Why don’t cats walk on leashes?

Postscript: if you've tried to leash train your cat you will know that it is not easy. The character of domestic cats does not lend itself to walking contentedly by your side on a lead. It is possible to train cats to do it but I don't think I've ever seen a story about a domestic cat being leash trained to walk down the sidewalk or pavement for any considerable distance in suburbia. You see leash trained cats trekking with their hiking owners. But that's rare too. And this is in the middle of nowhere so it is quiet.

I suspect that if there is a law which states that you must take your cat out on a lead nobody will do it. They will simply keep their cats inside instead. This is a potential health problem.

Northern Rivers citizens are ambivalent about laws confining and supervising cats

NEWS ANALYSIS-NORTHERN RIVERS, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA: I am unable to read this news item because I have to subscribe to the newspaper and I don't want to. But I can work out what it is about by reading an extract which is available to me on Microsoft Bing. I also know that Australia, in general, leads the way in attempts to regulate cat ownership with the objective of minimising domestic cat predation on native species. The Australian authorities are incredibly sensitive about the conservation of native species and they are very worried about feral and stray cats killing their small marsupials and mammals.

 Northern Rivers citizens are ambivalent about laws confining and supervising cats. Photo: Daily Telegraph (Australia).

One strategy is to confine all domestic cats to the home and enclosures attached to the home and if they go outside, it would have to be on a leash. In short, to prevent domestic cats going out into nature unsupervised and killing these endangered species. 

And the news tells me that the local government of Northern Rivers is considering a law which makes it mandatory to keep cats do these things. The problem is that the residents are ambivalent about it. No doubt there are some who are for it but a substantial percentage (and I don't have the numbers) are against it. 

There is a mixed reaction to the proposal to enact this legislation and under these circumstances I would expect it to fail as a proposal. Laws don't work well if the citizens to whom it applies disagree with it. There'll be enforcement difficulties.

Other potential methods of controlling cat ownership and encouraging cat owners to be more responsible vis-à-vis wildlife is to introduce obligatory licensing like dogs or obligatory micro-chipping. These sorts of ideas have been mooted before in Australia and in other countries. In general, the pressure to take action is gradually mounting as the population of domestic cats is growing in line with the population of humans.

As humans put more pressure on nature, more pressure is put on the authorities to do something about protecting the animals that live in nature. It's a straightforward equation: more people, more cats, more predation on wildlife and more angst among the politicians and administrators who feel they have a duty to conserve and protect precious native species in Australia. 

And you can't control human procreation. Look at China. Their one child policy has left them with a shrinking workforce. There has to be economic growth. This by the way is a failed idea in my view but that's another story.

Ironically and sadly more native species are lost through Australia's huge wildfires which occurred last year which have been put down to global warming which in turn can be put down to human activity. If it's not global warming it's increased commercial activity as businesses expand resulting in the destruction of nature through deforestation and therefore the loss of habitat for these precious species.

No matter how you slice it and dice it, it boils down to human activity as the cause of the consistent decrease in population sizes of these wild animals.

Weymouth Near Boston USA Decide Against Cat Leash Law

A proposal for what is in effect a cat leash law has been rejected by the Weymouth town committee and the council will probably take up the recommendation to reject the proposal at the next meeting. Under the proposal cat owners would be required to:

• Keep their cats leashed or under their control when outside the home and;
• clean up after their cats and;
• the animal control officer would be charged with the duty of picking up stray cats.

The committee decided against the proposal for the following reasons:

• Animal control receive very few complaints about stray cats - three complaints in three years.
• The town would have to be responsible for picked up stray cats for 30 days or more (presumably this would place a financial burden on the town that would be unacceptable).
• Collars attached to leashes can choke cats.
• The proposed ordinance was unworkable because the wording was imprecise.
• The proposed ordinance was probably unenforceable.

Leash laws are often discussed by local law makers and on the other side of the coin, how to deal with stray and feral cats are also often discussed. They are both addressing the major cat problem in the USA: unregulated cat breeding and irresponsible cat ownership leading to unwanted and stray cats causing a nuisance. TNR is becoming more popular for dealing with strays. Leash laws are hardly ever created (I know of none).

Weymouth is about 20 km south of Boston city center. The photo is by Finn Frode living in Denmark.