News / Environment
Council set to adopt new rules to keep cats indoors at night
24-hour curfew is rejected for compromise dawn-to-dusk policy
Mark Phillips
CAT owners will be required to keep their pets locked inside overnight under new Merri-bek Council rules that will come into effect next year.
After several years of discussion and consultation, the council has finally decided to introduce a new cat containment policy.
But it has opted against a full 24-hour policy, preferring instead a 7pm to 7am curfew.
The council endorsed the new policy after a lengthy debate at its monthly meeting last week. It will now go on exhibition for a month before final adoption towards the end of this year. The new rules would then begin in July next year.
It brings Merri-bek in line with most other inner and northern metropolitan municipalities, which already have a 24-hour or night-time curfew in place for cats.
The dawn-to-dusk curfew will be accompanied by a step-up in the council’s cat desexing program, with the goal of seeing unowned cats becoming owned and registered.
The new policy has been a long time coming, with a cat curfew first discussed by the council in 2022. Back then, it decided to focus efforts on containing the city’s stray cat problem, rather than introducing a curfew.
It is part of a Domestic Animal Management Plan, which all councils are required to update every four years and is due to expire in December.
Merri-bek’s cat population has increased by more than 10% since the council first began discussing a cat curfew to 8670 registered cats last financial year. It has grown by 16% since 2021-22, while the dog population has only grown by 3.5%.
At the same time, council officers are dealing with a growing number of stray cats.
The number of cats which have been impounded has grown by 8% since 2021-22 to 954 last year. Only 57 of those cats were returned to their owner, while 334 were euthanised.
The number of euthanised cats has grown by 64% since 2021-22. Last year, one-in-three stray cats were put to death, compared to 23% in 2021-22.
In a report prepared for last week’s meeting, council staff had recommended for the adoption of a full-scale curfew following an online community survey in which 78% of respondents supported tighter rules.
The council’s director of city infrastructure, Anita Curnow, said there was also strong support for a cat curfew from the RSPCA, Cat Protection Society of Victoria, and other organisations, and from veterinarians.
She said it was not anticipated that many cats would be taken from their owners if they did not comply with the proposed curfew.
“Enforcement would be a last resort,” she said, adding that there would be an emphasis on education and warnings.
Have your say: what do you think of the proposed cat curfew?
Dr Rachael Weaver, a Macedon Ranges-based academic who is currently researching the impact of European colonisation on biodiversity, told the council meeting a 24-hour cat curfew was needed to prevent cats killing native birds.
“Domestic cats are not the only cause of avian biodiversity decline, but they’re one of the greatest,” she said.
“Pet cats kill millions of native birds every year, including endangered species.
“Containing cats is a relatively simple but effective step and one that most responsible owners will be willing to undertake.”
Dr Jacinta Humphrey, an urban ecologist at RMIT University, said a 24-hour curfew would also benefit the cat population.
“Cats that are safely contained within our properties actually live longer,” she said.
“They’re far safer because they’re protected against things like being hit by cars, attacked by dogs, foxes, there’s also issues with disease risk as well and they don’t face any of that if they’re safely contained at home.”
But a former Moreland councillor, Jo Connellan, questioned how the council could practically implement a 24-hour cat curfew. She said it could be a recipe for neighbourhood disputes.
“You’ll have neighbours dobbing them in but also trapping them,” she said.
Councillor Ella Svensson pushed for the adoption of a 24-hour curfew with the addition of a grant program to help low-income households retrofit their properties to contain their cats either indoors or in an enclosed outdoor area.
She said domesticated cats were a danger to wildlife and to themselves if allowed to freely roam in an urban environment.
“This policy isn’t anti-cat – it’s pro-cat and pro-wildlife,” she said.
“Indoor or enclosed outdoor cats … live up to 10 years longer than cats that roam.”
Councillor Sue Bolton argued that a cat containment policy was the wrong focus and attention should instead be paid to dealing with unowned cats.
“The cat curfew is a feelgood, superficial solution which makes people think we’ve done something but in actual fact we haven’t done anything appreciable for wildlife when we have so many unowned and semi-owned cats,” she said.
“If we really are to address the issues, we need to be able to seriously reduce those colonies of cats in a humane way.”
The 24-hour curfew was defeated by seven votes to four.
A night-time curfew was proposed by Deputy Mayor Helen Politis as a compromise measure.
If adopted unchanged, the new cat containment rules will be introduced next July, and will be preceded by an education campaign for cat owners, including information provided as part of registration renewal. There will be an eight-month grace period after the new rules come into effect.
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