Top three reasons why Australians adopt cats from animal shelters

A study published in 2015 titled Determinants of Choice and outcomes for adult cats and kittens adopted from an Australian animal shelter found that the top three reasons for adopting a cat from an animal shelter are (1) it was the right thing to do and (2) they wanted to help the shelter and (3) they believed that the shelter was a trusted and a credible option. The remaining 13 reasons are listed below in a chart and in words:

The shelter provided cats and kittens which are sterilised, vaccinated and micro-chipped. It was also convenient to get to the shelter because their opening hours were suitable. Another reason is that they had checked perhaps online and wanted a particular kitten at a shelter. They also wanted after adoption support and they found that shelter cats and kittens were good value. They also believed that a shelter provided lots of choice and that they were convenient to get to. Some had already adopted from a shelter and they were happy with the experience while others had been referred to a shelter. Some felt that shelter cats and kittens were cheap to adopt and had heard about low-cost promotions for cats. Others found that cats and kittens were cheaper when adopted from a shelter and finally others said that friends and family thought that they should adopt from a shelter because, I presume, they advised that it was the right thing to do.

The chart:

Chart showing reasons for adoption. Source: the study referred to above.

The study was conducted by Sarah Zito, Mandy Paterson, Dianne Vankan, John Morton, Pauleen Bennett and Clive Phillips.

The study confirms that the type of person who adopts from an animal shelter is thoughtful and in general wants to do the right thing which is what I'd expect.

Indicators of poor cat ownership in Melbourne Australia 2009

There is a study online on the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science dated 2009 entitled Admissions of Cats to Animal Welfare Shelters in Melbourne, Australia (link). It paints a picture of poor-quality cat ownership in Melbourne Australia and I will tell you why.

Stray cat Australia. Photo in the public domain

The scientists investigated what was going on at one large Melbourne shelter over a 12-month period. In the abstract to the report, they don't tell us the name of the shelter. But they say that they tracked 15,206 cat admissions. They found that 81.6% of the admitted cats were strays. That means they were unowned but were likely to be previously owned. They had wandered away from the home and nobody had taken a blind notice.

They also found that only 4% of the cats coming in that year were sterilised. I'll restate that, only 4/100 cats admitted to this shelter had been either spayed or neutered. That is highly indicative of poor cat ownership. And if the cat was a true domestic cat the rate of spaying and neutering was at 12.8%. That is a little bit more than 1 in every 10. Once again, this is highly indicative of a negligent form of cat ownership.

Finally, they state that "the majority of cats admitted were euthanised". What they mean to say is that the majority of cats were killed because I'm going to make the presumption that the majority of cats were not in such a poor state of health that they had to be euthanised. 

Euthanasia only takes place, in truth, if it is more humane to put a cat to sleep than to treat them and bring them back to health. So, the scientists are using a euphemism to cover up the mass killing of thousands of stray cats entering a major animal shelter in Melbourne, Australia.

It does not paint a pretty picture. And it encourages the authorities to place restrictions on cat ownership because one aspect of this story is that when you have that many stray cats wandering around the environment, they have an impact on native species due to predation, which is of great concern to the authorities in Australia. There are two sides to the coin in this instance: both sides don't look good.

Australian scientist claims that diseases transmitted by cats to people cost the Australian economy AU$6 billion annually

I find this extraordinary. Unfortunately I don't have access to the full article by Donna Lu on the newscientist.com website because you have to subscribe to the site and I don't want to do that (but see update below please). But the opening paragraphs state that diseases transmitted by the domestic cat to people, including cat scratch disease, cost the Australian economy more than AU$6 billion per year (4.2 US dollars). The costings are based upon the impact on human health and livestock production. Clearly they are inferring that domestic cat spread disease to livestock as well or is it that people are incapacitated and therefore can't farm? They may be referring to toxoplasmosis. No doubt they are because this disease always comes up in these sorts of discussions. The author emphasises cat scratch disease and bites.

Prof Sarah Legge. Photo: Australian National University.

Well, there you are. I will have to speculate as to how they have calculated this cost. But they must be saying is that cat owners and non-cat owners are being bitten or scratched by domestic and stray cats which removes them from the workplace for a day or two while they recover. Or perhaps they go to hospital but this is normally extremely rare.

99% of cat bites and scratches do pretty well nothing in terms of interfering with one's day-to-day living. That's my personal experience. Toxoplasmosis is almost always asymptomatic in people i.e. no symptoms. Cat scratch disease is rare in people. Certainly, cats can cause it but I would speculate that one in 500 or 1000 scratches results in cat scratch disease. It needs to be treated. Bites are not uncommon but most often are irritations more than injuries that need to be dealt with immediately. That said when bitten by a cat you have to be vigilant and watch the area where you were bitten. As soon as it looks as if it's becoming infected you must take antibiotics as prescribed by a doctor to ensure that they are the right antibiotics. This is an absolute must as stated. Because if you let an infection caused by a cat bite get worse it can cause a serious injury and it can lead to hospitalisation.

Zoonotic diseases transmitted by cats to people are on the whole pretty rare and therefore have difficulty in understanding how they arrive at a AU$6 billion cost.

Update

I have found an article on a Chinese website which discusses the research by Prof Sarah Legge of the Australian National University and the University of Queensland. She argues that annually over 500 people die in Australia and there are 11,000 hospitalisations due do diseases transmitted by cats to people. The costs include medical treatment, reasonable relevant expenses, lost income et cetera.

She refers to toxoplasmosis as mentioned, roundworm and cat scratch disease. Of these toxoplasmosis has the biggest negative impact on the Australian economy. She claims that it has possible long-term effects on behaviour and mental health. Note, the word "possible". She doesn't know and therefore how can she make calculations on the back of it.

She claims that the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis causes 200 deaths and 6,500 hospitalisations due to car accidents which could be avoided in Australia annually. She believes that the disease causes mental health disorders which I presume are translated into poor driving! She claims that one in five cases of schizophrenia and one in 10 cases of suicide were caused by toxoplasmosis. She wants domestic cats to be kept indoors all the time in Australia and for people to wash their hands thoroughly after handling cat litter or gardening. This is to stop transmission of toxoplasma gondii oocysts in the soil or faeces in the litter tray to the hands and from the hands to the mouth and therefore ingested.

She also claims that feral cats around towns are a reservoir for disease.

Human behavior

We have to discuss human behaviour in this equation. Most cases of toxoplasmosis are caused by mishandling of raw foods in the kitchen. That's due to careless human behaviour. Being scratched or bitten by cat is often put down to careless human behaviour. Contracting toxoplasmosis through mishandling of cat litter or when gardening, once again, can be put down at least in part two careless human behaviour. Therefore this vast economic loss to the economy in Australia as stated is in large part due to human behaviour. It is unreasonable to blame the cat exclusively as this professor is.

Ford in Australia team up with fantasist big cat hunters to promote their SUV Puma

When you look at the pictures of the supposed big cats that these fantasists produce as evidence that they are roaming around the interior of the Australian continent, you are driven to a single conclusion namely that they are fantasists. In one picture there is a black cat on top of a tree stump and for all the world it looks like a domestic cat. How they can let their imagination run so wild as to believe that this is a black panther is beyond me.

Ford's new hybrid SUV the Puma. Photo: Ford

But Ford have jumped onto the bandwagon in their desire to promote their new Ford Puma SUV. It's just been launched and of course the name - as is commonplace - has been plucked from the wild cat species. The puma is a mountain lion which has the biggest distribution of all the wild cat species. And sometimes the puma can be black i.e. melanistic. So why not dive in and join up with these fantasists to promote the vehicle?

They think this is a big cat! Come on, please stop this. Photo Black Panther Sightings on FB.

At least Ford's new sport utility vehicle runs on a high-tech hybrid engine. I suppose they had to do that because you cannot, these days, bring out a new car unless it is at least a hybrid. But it is really time to stop pretending that there are big cats roaming around the countryside in countries where there are no big cats. These people are like UFO hunters. They are one and the same in terms of their mentality.

Perhaps it is a throwback to Neanderthal human thinking when people in that era genuinely had to fight for survival against the big cats. A time when they had to compete with them to survive. Maybe it's in our blood to be fearful of big cats and when you're fearful of them you think they are everywhere lurking in the forests and in the dark. Your imagination runs wild and you transform a sweet little black domestic cat into a black panther like the picture on this page. Compare the cat with the trees and fence and you know that it is a black domestic cat.

Australian Mist Picture

Australian Mist - photograph © copyright Terry Goulden

The Australian Mist is an Australian hybrid purebred cat. This breed is a nice amalgam of two cat breeds, the Burmese and Abyssinian together with the domestic shorthair (DSH - random bred cat). This is a well balanced cat that makes a really nice cat companion.  The name describes the way the spotted or marbled tabby pattern is muted as if being viewed through a mist. This is a cat of moderate proportions and balanced character. The Australian Mist is not yet a well known or mainstream cat breed. Read and see more here.

Australians are Hostile to Stray Cats

Why do I get the distinct impression that Australians are hostile to stray cats? I mean Australians as a nation not individual Australians lots of whom are very much for, and care for, the stray and feral cats. And lets not forget that stray cats are quite possibly domestic companion cats that are simply outdoors. All over the internet are stories of stray cats in Australia being ill treated.

There seems to be a kind of culture that approaches that found in China with respect to the stray cat or indeed feral cat. This culture seems to have been promoted or even generated by a long term and on-going campaign by government officials who have claimed that the poor maligned stray cats and feral cats of Australia are responsible for the death of millions of native wild animals. A reality check indicates that this is not the case. Here are a few facts that come from a very reliable source, Sarah Hartwell (unless otherwise stated), who was assisted by http://www.catassist.org.au:

• there are pro and anti feral and stray cat camps. I sense that the anti camp is winning because of government backing (my view)
  
• there are no accurate figures on the numbers of stray cats and feral cats in Australia. This fuels guesswork and alarmist assessments. The figure is, apparently, between 3 and 30 million.
  
• an influential survey carried out in 1994 by Dr David Paton claimed that cats kill 3.8 billion animals and birds annually. A vast number. But this survey, which may be etched in the minds of some Australians, has been found to be lacking in objectivity (Dr. Paton disliked cats) and accuracy. It is, in short, misleading. More birds are killed by cars than cats in Australia (survey result not guesswork).
• another study of 1994 (by Reark research for Petcare Information and Advisory Service) confirmed that cats preferred hunting introduced wild species (rabbit and mouse) rather than native Australian species thus debunking the claim that precious native species are being slaughtered by cats.
  
• habitat destruction by people is probably the biggest killer of native Australian wildife (my view)
• it seems that a considerable percentage of vets are also against the feral and stray cat. Witness the case of Possum who was shot 27 times and the owner couldn't find a vet to assist until after 4 tries a kind a decent vet did assist. (see Worst Case of Cat Cruelty) -this is my view and not Sarah Hartwells.
  
• Ms Hartwell supports my view that wholesale shooting of feral cats is inhumane and it doesn't work either. (see Ground Shooting of Feral Cats and the Vacuum Effect). She also supports proper, humane and organised action using TNR techniques. The Australians seem incapable of accepting this. It isn't, it seems, in their nature as it would take a long term approach and a concerted approach.
  
• all the signs are that, generally, as an electorate, Australians are hostile to Stray cats.
  

Some selected posts on this topic:

• Feral Cats of Australia
• Australian Feral Cat Laws
• Savannah Cat Ban in Australia in Wrong
• Feral Cats

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