[CAT] "L.A. County to weigh requiring pet cats to be spayed or neutered"

[rfmcdonald]

The Los Angeles Times' Abby Sewell reports on a proposal from Los Angeles County to make the spaying and neutering of pet cats mandatory. The availability of relatively inexpensive methods to do this will be key to this proposal working, as noted in the article.

Los Angeles County officials will consider requiring cat owners to spay and neuter their pets, in hopes of reducing the population and, by extension, the number of cats killed in county shelters every year.

Supervisors Michael D. Antonovich and Hilda Solis proposed the new requirement for the approximately 1 million people living in county unincorporated areas, citing the disproportionately high number of cats euthanized.

They also want the county's Department of Animal Care and Control to look for ways to provide subsidized spay-neuter services to cat owners.

If a stray dog or cat is brought to a county shelter, officials are legally required to hold it for a few days in case an owner wants to claim it. If no one does and the animal is not adopted, it can be killed to make room for others.

About 70% of cats brought into county shelters end up being killed, compared with 30% of dogs. Many of those animals are feral cats and unweaned kittens. The supervisors noted that the number of dogs coming into county shelters has declined by 60% over the last 40 years, while cat intake has gone down by only 30%.