That Sweet Home has too many stray cats is undeniable.
But recent suggestions by City Councilor Jim Bean to make responsible cat owners pay (page 1), and by Linn County Commissioner John Lindsey for some kind of enforcement against irresponsible cat owners, miss the mark.
The problem is, by government officials’ reckoning, an out-of-control feral cat population.
Bean and Lindsey appear to reason that some cat owners are irresponsible and don’t spay or neuter their animals. Therefore, all cat owners should pay to solve the problem.
Bean wants to license cats and make sure those who own the animals contribute to solving the problem. The problem with Bean’s idea is that the folks who don’t spay or neuter their cats now are unlikely to comply with a licensing fee, while responsible pet owners will license their animals, tacking that fee onto the cost of owning their cats.
Bean is proposing a classic big-government solution to this problem. He wants one segment of the population to solve a problem that affects the entire public while, in effect, ignoring those directly responsible for creating the problem.
If someone is to pay to reduce the local cat population, either through removing feral cats or sterilizing those that are pets, the public as a whole should pay for it, not some individual cat owners who are forced to step up to the plate to pay for a problem they didn’t cause.
The problem with Lindsey’s ideas are not quite so philosophical. They are impractical. Although Bean appears to disagree with this idea, no one really owns a cat. Any cat owner will tell you that – especially those who have shelled out the money to get a kitten sterilized, then had it move off to a better living situation. Let’s face it, a lot of cats are about more faithful to the best spread of food than they are to the love and care of an owner.
If ownership isn’t cut and dried, it’s hard to establish who’s actually causing the problem.
City Manager Craig Martin and Mayor Craig Fentiman are correct when they argue that when the “cat control officer” shows up to deal with a cat, an irresponsible owner is likely to just deny they own the animal.
Since identifying cat owners looks to be well-nigh impossible in many instances, Lindsey’s goal of making them accept responsibility is unrealistic. If he can think of a practical way to make his idea work, then so be it.
If licensing were simply a matter of requiring that a cat wear a collar with an identification tag, which the city should provide at no charge, some of these ideas that Bean is suggesting might be workable.
The advantage of a collar and tag is that the city could arrange to remove cats that don’t have them, which would help lower the cat population. If a cat that had a collar and tag were captured, it could be released to go wherever cats go; but short of some mechanism to force those responsible to stop the problem, something that is quite unrealistic, the entire public should pay for treating the symptoms of this problem.
The city and county are quite right to deal with this problem, and the city’s proposed $5,000 contribution toward solving the problem is appropriate.
But as things progress, they need to continue spreading the cost across the board rather than charge a few, who aren’t causing the problem.