‘YOU CAN’T BAN COMPASSION’: HELPING STRAY CATS IS ILLEGAL IN MUCH OF AUSTRALIA – BUT FOR SOME, IT’S WORTH THE RISK

For the past decade, Sarah’s* two-bedroom ground-floor apartment in Sydney has transformed into a sanctuary for stray cats.

“I’ve got six at the moment,” she tells Guardian Australia. “Only one of them was a tame homeless cat. The rest were unsocialized strays.” One of her latest rescues, Bluey, was in dire condition when Sarah met him two years ago. “He was about 10 years old, sick, and in very bad shape,” she says.

When Bluey first appeared in her garden, he was weak, antisocial, and suffering from rotting teeth. Unable to hunt, he was drawn to the food Sarah left out for her other cats. “He’d sneak into the kitchen and steal food whenever the back door was open. So, I started feeding him separately.”

Whenever a stray cat shows up at Sarah’s home, she traps them and takes them to the vet for desexing and treatment. If she can find them a new home, she does, but often, she has no choice but to release them back where they were found. “I’ll feed them if I see them, but I won’t treat them as my own,” she says.

Bluey, however, stayed. Now, Sarah says, he’s become much calmer and even allows her to pet him.

Sarah is part of a large, loosely organized network of volunteers across Australia who feed, desex, treat, and try to rehome stray cats. It’s a growing issue—animal shelters are overwhelmed, often housing more cats and kittens than they have homes for. Cat adopters are sometimes asked if they can take in two or even three cats, rather than just one.

But the work that Sarah and other volunteers do has become a point of controversy. Many have faced verbal abuse, threats, and online harassment for their efforts. Some have witnessed cruelty from the public, including poisoned water bowls or food and dog owners who encourage their pets to chase and attack the cats.

The stereotype of the “crazy cat lady” also regularly emerges, something Sarah finds frustrating. “It annoys me. I just do what I can when problems appear at my door. No sane person chooses to have six cats—they just show up,” she says. “It seems like you have to be mad to care about hunger and pain. How can people look at a hungry cat and not feed it? They say, ‘don’t feed it, you’ll never get rid of it.’ Well, that doesn’t solve the problem, does it?”

There’s another layer to this controversy: in most parts of Australia, it’s illegal.

‘It’s not their fault’

Cat management has become a growing issue at both the state and federal levels due to the devastating impact that cats, as introduced predators, have on Australia’s native wildlife.

All cats in Australia belong to the same species, Felis catus, but how they are classified under the law—whether as pets or pests, and who is responsible for their care—varies across different regions. This classification often depends on the subjective relationship between the cat and the human who encounters it.

While exact figures are difficult to determine, estimates based on the RSPCA’s preferred classifications suggest there are around 4.9 million owned cats, about 710,000 semi-owned or unowned cats (roaming urban “strays” that rely partially or indirectly on humans), and between 1.4 million and 4.6 million feral cats living independently in the bush. Non-neutered cats are highly prolific breeders, with female cats capable of becoming pregnant at just four months old and having multiple litters each season.

The Threatened Species Recovery Hub estimates that cats are responsible for killing 1.9 million reptiles, 1.2 million birds, 3.2 million mammals, 3 million invertebrates, and at least 250,000 frogs every day. Pet and urban roaming cats account for approximately 32% of this toll. Cats have played a significant role in the extinction of more than two-thirds of the 34 Australian mammal species lost since colonization, and have contributed to the decline of bird populations in many urban areas. In response to this environmental impact, in 2023, the Nature Conservation Council, Invasive Species Council, Birdlife Australia, Wires, and the Australian Wildlife Society called for local councils to enforce anti-roaming laws for pet cats.

On 24 December, the federal environment department released a threat abatement plan targeting the predation of wildlife by feral cats. The plan categorizes cats into two groups: pet and feral, with direct culling of feral cats being a central component of the strategy. Methods such as baiting and shooting are included in the plan. Last year, the New South Wales government deployed a dedicated shooting team to target cats in the state’s national parks, and the state’s legislative council is currently conducting an inquiry into cat management. Similarly, the Victorian government recently released its own 10-year cat management strategy.

While most cat advocates agree that feral cats in bushland are causing significant harm to wildlife, some dispute the extent of the issue or argue that cat control efforts divert attention from the larger problem of habitat loss—a stance that aligns with the views of certain conservationists. Others are opposed to lethal control methods.

However, the debate becomes more polarized when it comes to managing semi-owned or unowned urban cats, which are of particular concern to individuals like Sarah.

“I think they’re incredibly destructive to the environment. But I think the question is, what do you do about it?” she says. “Cats are living creatures too, and many of them are just homeless and hungry. It’s not their fault.”

Trap, Neuter, Return or Catch and Kill?

Two of the kittens Sarah adopted were born in the vice-chancellor’s garden at the University of New South Wales. The university campus in Kensington, Sydney, had struggled with a stray cat problem for years. At its peak in 2006, around 90 cats were living on the campus. That’s when Emeritus Prof Helen Swarbrick became involved.

“They were breeding, and the university was receiving complaints, so they decided to call in the pest controllers,” Swarbrick says. “It was an expensive and ineffective solution. We protested strongly and eventually got the university’s attention.”

She offered the university an alternative strategy: they would trap and desex all the campus cats, then return them to the university grounds to be monitored, fed daily, socialised, given veterinary care, and as many as possible ultimately rehomed. Any new cats that arrived would be similarly treated.

The program was approved by the university and the Campus Cat Coalition was formed. In its first nine years of operation, the coalition worked with a total of 122 cats, including “immigrant” cats, reducing the population to 15, all desexed. At the time of writing, only eight remain, and the program continues with the sanction of the university.

The practice of “trap, neuter, and return” (TNR), a key component of some cat management strategies, remains highly controversial. Wildlife and conservation advocates strongly oppose TNR. The Invasive Species Council, a vocal proponent of strict cat control, argued in a 2020 submission to a federal parliamentary inquiry that there is “little or no evidence” supporting TNR as an effective method for managing feral cat populations. They also pointed to a large body of scientific literature that disputes the claims of TNR’s efficacy. This stance was supported by other organizations, including the Threatened Species Recovery Hub, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, and the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions.

However, this perspective is challenged by advocates like Emeritus Prof Helen Swarbrick and Emeritus Prof Jacquie Rand from the University of Queensland’s veterinary science department. They argue that research, including their own studies, demonstrates that sustained programs involving desexing, feeding, monitoring, vaccination, and adoption can lead to long-term reductions in feral cat populations at key locations and surrounding areas.

Despite these claims, cat management programs involving TNR are illegal in most parts of Australia, though the legal reasons vary. In New South Wales, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act prohibits the abandonment of cats, although the law has not yet been tested with programs like the one at the University of New South Wales. In Queensland, biosecurity laws make it illegal to feed, move, adopt, or sell unowned cats.

In 2013, the Brisbane City Council introduced a strict trapping program aimed at pest animals, where any captured cats with signs of ownership, such as microchips, were sent to shelters, and the rest were euthanized. In the program’s first phase, 391 out of 401 captured cats were put down. This initiative was paired with a tough enforcement strategy that penalized individuals for feeding, desexing, or rehoming stray cats. Over a three-year period, this led to 52 convictions, $27,000 in fines—most for repeat offenders—and one person receiving a three-month suspended prison sentence for feeding cats.

Prof Rand, who is conducting alternative cat management trials in Queensland under a permit, argues that such hardline approaches fail to address the underlying socioeconomic factors contributing to the stray cat population, such as pet abandonment, housing instability, rental restrictions, and the costs of mandatory desexing, registration, and microchipping. Additionally, she believes these methods unfairly penalize people for showing compassion.

“You can’t ban compassion. Those people will go to jail to continue to help the cats if they feel that those cats need their help,” Rand says. “It wastes government money, damages human wellbeing, and there’s a much better way—assist people in getting cats desexed and managed in a way that resolves complaints.”

She emphasizes that a welfare-based approach would also alleviate the burden on veterinarians, who often face the distressing task of euthanizing healthy animals, and reduce the emotional toll on individuals who have formed bonds with stray cats.

“We must recognize the value of cats in people’s lives and work with that, because if we don’t, we can’t solve the problem,” Rand says.

‘In the end it changed nothing’

When Ludovic* bought a house in a quiet cul-de-sac in Campbelltown, Sydney, four years ago, he adopted two cats. He then quickly discovered a huge colony of them lived in his street.

“Nobody was taking action, so I started rescuing the kittens and got some technical support from rescue groups,” he says. “It took two years, but I was able to rehome about 20 cats and kittens from the colony.” He personally took in six of them and, at his own expense, desexed around 20 others before returning them to the streets.

This story is common among urban cat networks. Many volunteers have shared with Guardian Australia that they began trapping and desexing roaming cats, often at their own expense, simply because the issue was right at their doorstep and no one else was stepping in to help.

Most local councils provide little to no assistance in these efforts. Volunteers argue that local, state, and federal governments should at least partially or fully subsidize cat desexing, helping to remove a major financial barrier to responsible pet ownership and curb the proliferation of the problem.

Ludovic says there are now only 10 cats left in his street, and since he started neutering them, only two kittens have been born—both from a mother who had been abandoned.

Becoming a cat advocate wasn’t his plan. “[But] doing nothing meant dealing with cat poop and pee every day, cat fights, and half-dead kittens. So, it started as a selfish decision: either do something about it or keep putting up with that forever.”

Before Ludovic took action, other neighbors had contacted authorities to handle the issue, and he understands that many of the cats were euthanized. “My elderly neighbor who cared for the cats was heartbroken,” he says. “In the end, it didn’t change anything.”Top of FormBottom of Form