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.

'Staggering' disease in cats - cause

In Europe there has been a mysterious staggering disease killing cats. The news has kept a rather low profile so you might not have heard of it. Apparently, it's been known to science for around 50 years but it became a concern in 2020 when it killed a tree kangaroo, donkey and a capybara in Germany. It is linked to encephalitis in a wide range of animals.

Recently the disease has been contracted by domestic cats. The symptoms include loss of ability to retract their claws seizures, loss of control of limbs and tremors. The cats stagger as if they are drunk hence the name of the disease. The disease progresses over about two weeks and there is no cure. Sadly, there is also very little in the way of treatment. The experts aren't sure how long it takes to kill domestic cats because not all of those who get the disease are euthanised.

Very recently, the scientists have discovered what they believe is the cause. They collected the brains of 29 euthanised cats from different places in Germany, Sweden and Austria. The brains were scanned for evidence of Borna virus DNA but none were found. However, they found the rustrela virus in 28 of the brains. This is a relative of the rubella virus which infects humans.

In humans, the virus is highly contagious and can be spread from pregnant women to their unborn babies. Pregnant women who contract the disease can give birth to infants with congenital rubella syndrome suffering from growth retardation, deafness, congenital defects and mental retardation.

The scientists have also suggested that this staggering disease virus may infect humans and an unknown number of other mammals.

I don't know if there are any infected cats in the USA or other areas. My research did not reveal information on that.

Woman's new home came with two stray cats and they changed her life

Julia Davis, 24, begins the story of her relationship with 2 stray cats that she met at her new home by saying: "The new house that I'm moving into literally came with a cat". She subsequently found another! So, her new home came with two cats, one white and one black, and they changed her life.

Davis, Coop and in the background the chicken coop where he was found. Image: Julia Davis.

She already had a TikTok page and decided to document the story of her new cat companion who with the help of TikTok visitors decided to call him 'Cooper' because he was found in a chicken coop at the back of the house (is it a chicken coop?). I guess he had used it for cover and as a home. As she approached the construction, she saw the fluffy, white stray cat.

The video explains what happened. 

@julia_adavis Drop name suggestions in the comments! Bonus-I really like names that are nouns or names that have shorter nicknames that end in the “e” sound #names #cat ♬ original sound - Julia Davis

Note: This is an embedded video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source or the video is turned into a link which would stop it working here. I have no control over this.

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She noticed that he had not been cared for and was therefore a stray perhaps formerly owned as he was very friendly. She adopted him there and then it seems to me. She decided to take him to a veterinarian pretty well immediately and I guess as soon as possible because his ears were in a bad way and he needed to be checked over and receive some basic veterinary care. He had probably been in fights with other cats. That's how their ears get scratched and torn.

RELATED: No One Owns Stray Or Feral Cats.

A few days later Davies posted another TikTok video showing the discovery of a second cat, this time black, sitting on the roof of the chicken coop and waiting to be adopted! He was also in poor health. She named him 'Rufus' and decided to take care of him as well.

She provides regular updates on her TikTok page about her relationship with these two friendly stray cats who are no longer strays. As long as her viewers are interested - and they are - she said that she would continue to provide updates.

And she kindly said: "I honestly like to say these cats belong to all of us. Everyone who watches my videos has played a part in their care. It's been a massive group effort that's restored my faith in humanity."

She said that because of the help that she had received from the community of TikTok users, "These cats have a better life than they had before. I think that's really awesome".

And of course, they have helped her. She has a better life than before it seems to me with TikTok success. And the backstory is a good one: cat welfare. Two cats have a much better life; a life that they should have as domestic cat companions and not struggling strays. You can see how keen Coop was to receive the touch of a human hand in the video.

P.S. There have been instances of people moving home who have deliberately left their domestic cat companion behind because either (1) they want to get rid of their cat or (2) they believe that domestic cats should stay with their home as they are wedded to their home range.

Volunteers sitting with the animals during 4th July firework celebrations

All that I have of this story is this photograph and it is a great photograph of volunteers sitting with the rescue animals at an unknown shelter in the US on July 4 to comfort them when the fireworks start to go off. It is a heartwarming photograph. A photograph to soften the hardened heart. A heart hardened by the usual hassles of living on this planet which for most of us isn't that easy at least some of the time. There are good people out there and they volunteer their time.

Volunteers sitting with the animals during 4th July firework celebrations. Photo: Facebook page of 'Artistic Freedom'.

I guess, too, that the people benefit because they are able to mix with like-minded people so it is a great way to socialise. And of course, they know that they are doing something good in helping animals who are already stressed by being confined to small cages in a noisy shelter with strange people wandering by from time to time.

I am sure that stress is the biggest psychological problem for rescue cats and dogs in shelters. It affects their behaviour which in turn affects their adaptability. For them it is a double whammy of stress-inducing influences because they are already stressed and they going to be stress some more because of the strange and loud noises. Well done to these people. The photograph caught my eye and I felt that I needed to circulate it on the Internet a little bit.

The Internet does not help me in trying to find out how commonplace this type of volunteer work is in the USA. My gut feeling is that it is not that uncommon but it is the first time that I've seen this kind of photograph and I have seen tens of thousands of photographs of animal shelters.

Animals need jabs against zoonotic diseases to prevent pandemics

Zoonotic diseases are those which can transfer from animals to people. The classic case is the Covid pandemic. Prof Dame Sarah Gilbert, the creator of the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid which proved so successful and which saved millions of lives, has stated that vaccines and new treatment should be developed to protect animals against diseases that can prove deadly when they jump to humans.

Vaccines against these zoonotic diseases could play a major role in avoiding the next pandemic. Minds are focused on the next pandemic. The monkeypox virus which is currently an issue in the UK is a good example although that will not create a pandemic. However, it's a virus that has been a threat for a long time and it has changed its nature. And it is zoonotic.

Gilbert said that influenza A was around in wild birds for a long time and it started to infect poultry flocks and so I could still spill over into humans. She believes that there is a lot that can be done to protect domestic animals against these infections to avoid humans being exposed to them.

Of course, this also concerns cats and dogs as well as livestock. Covid did infect both captive wild cats and relatively a very few domestic cats. There was a discussion at one time about the possibility of domestic animals creating a reservoir for the virus which may then come back to us in the future perhaps mutated.

There is a need to look forward to prevent the devastation that Covid caused the world. There is also a need, I must add, to demand that the Chinese government compensate the world for the devastation that they caused due to their careless approach to the slaughter of wild animals at wet markets which is now accepted as one plausible cause of the pandemic because those markets allowed the transmission of zoonotic diseases from animals such as pangolins to the people in the market is doing the slaughtering.