THE City of North Vancouver is putting down its 14-year-old cat regulation bylaw.
Under the bylaw, it was illegal for owners to let their unspayed or unneutered cats roam at large, all cats were to wear identification tags, and owners of non-sterilized cats were required to purchase "breeding permits" at $50 a year.
But, despite good intentions, the bylaw turned into an expensive means of sheltering strays and unwanted cats with little effect on owners' behaviour, according to Brad McRae, the city's manager of bylaw services.
"The bylaw itself is next to impossible to enforce. There's a struggle," McRae, said. "We were well past what bylaw's intent was and we were actually running a cat service."
The city's bylaw officers do animal control and the city contracts the housing of captured animals to Northwest Kennels in North Vancouver, which at $20 per day per cat plus food and vet bills, was adding up to tens of thousands of dollars per year. In 2011, the city spent $23,500 on sheltering cats. In the first six months of 2013, it was $16,000 of the total $144,000 animal control budget.
"At the end of the day, we ended up being a housing facility for cats that were not being adopted," McRae said. "The average length of staying there was 77 days. Some extremes were 300 or 400 days. The average time a dog is there is 24 to 72 hours, maximum."
The reason for that is dogs are more likely to have owners looking for them, or if the dog has been abandoned, someone willing to adopt much sooner.
Vet bills too run into the hundreds of dollars before cats even enter the shelter.
"If it's going to cost us a few hundred dollars to provide penicillin or antibiotics or something along those lines, then we will do so knowing that after we give this medication, this animal will be adoptable," McRae said. "We will look at the animal for several criteria before we consider other alternatives like (euthanizing them)."
Making matters worse, the city is one of the only governments in the Lower Mainland to have such a bylaw, McRae said, and there are wordof-mouth anecdotes about people deliberately abandoning cats in the city because they know the cats will be looked after.
Now, instead of keeping the cats until they are adopted, the city is going to look to non-profits, like the Pacific Animal Foundation, which does a trap, neuter and release program, as well as veterinarians to assist and find forever homes for the otherwise unwanted kitties.
"We are not animal welfare. We're not an adoption agency. We're animal control and we need to figure a way to deal with this particular issue," he said. "We've been acting outside the parameters of the bylaw for quite some time. The bylaw's ineffective. It's costing the taxpayers a ton of money for something other people could do much better."
The city supports the Pacific Animal Foundation with a yearly grant but still, the foundation would rather see the city continue lending a hand in finding a home for cats in the shelter.
".. . If there is a stray, friendly cat, there should be a safe place for it to go. Residents expect that," said Lana Simon, director of the foundation said in an email. "We would like to see the city make some sort of arrangement to use the District Animal Welfare shelter and have a small annual budget for those strays. The volunteer groups do not have the resources or funds to take on all the stray cats for a municipality."
City council voted to repeal the 1999 bylaw unanimously with no discussion on July 22.
The city must vote again to finalize the repeal of the bylaw when council reconvenes in the fall.
