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Public Petitions Committee 07 December 2017

07 Dec 2017 · S5 · Public Petitions Committee

Item of business

New Petitions

Cat Population (Management) (PE1674)

Ellie Stirling Watch on SPTV

It is a privilege to have this opportunity and I really appreciate it. The committee’s consideration of my petition represents a change of tack from the previous discussion except that, as I worked all my paid working life as a clinical psychologist in the mental health service in England and Scotland, it was interesting to hear it. Having said that, I think that that experience is relevant to my petition. I am not paid to do the work that I do now, but I work virtually full time—as some people do when they retire—in environmental work. For some reason, I seem to be attached to cats and, just as I worked with vulnerable people in vulnerable circumstances, I have tended to try to help cats that live in vulnerable circumstances. In the 20 years since I moved back to Scotland, I have been doing trap, neuter, return. As some members might know, that is an approach that is used universally and which has been used by the Scottish wildcat action project to limit the number of cats of the domestic species that crossbreed with the wildcat. I suppose that I should not have been surprised, but I have found that it is a war zone out there: there are animals living in circumstances that you would not dream of for your own pet. Some members might not have pets, but those who do know that people who keep pets—dogs, cats, rabbits or whatever—tend to see them as vulnerable and important members of the family. They are vulnerable in the sense that we have the responsibility to keep them safe and meet their needs, as we do for our children. However, that is not happening for the cats out there. A lot of people think that feral cats are a different species from our domestic cats at home, but they are not. They are exactly the same cats, but they are uncared for. I had been doing that work for perhaps 10 years before I noticed that the areas where I had neutered all the cats started to fill up with cats again, which turned out to be cats that came from the pet cat population. A bit late in the day, I did some research and found some studies, which you have references to in your papers. The studies told me that a minority of pet cat owners still do not neuter their cats, although pet organisations have made great headway, to the extent that 90 per cent of owners now do so. However, 10 per cent of owners—13 per cent in Scotland—do not. You would think that that is fine and that we can just keep nudging the owners and we will get there, but it is not happening. I looked at more figures, which showed that the number of homes available for cats stalled in 2013. That number is not getting any higher; if anything, it is going down. Enough new animals are being produced—because of the 10 per cent of cat owners who do not have their cats neutered—to increase the pet cat population by a factor of more than two every four years. It is simple arithmetic. Where are the cats going? They are overspilling, as there are not enough homes for them. We can talk about the figures later, if members want, but the cats are overspilling into back streets and the countryside. By that time, I had shovelled alongside the Scottish wildcat action project and was helping it with TNR techniques. I discovered the crucial importance of controlling our domestic, stray and feral cat populations to saving the wildcat in Scotland. The research that I did—only this year, to my shame—has brought me to this point today. It seems that we are at a tipping point and a decision point. If we go on in the way that we are, producing cats that join the enormous and growing feral and stray population, neither the existing wildcats nor future reintroduced wildcats will have a chance. There is also the issue of the horrendous welfare implications for the cats. Alternatively, we could look at the new measures of neutering and identification chipping—I understand that they would have to be looked at carefully—which would seem to be a basic necessity for good cat care and health. Veterinary professionals support neutering and ID chipping as basic essentials of good cat healthcare, as do all the cat and pet welfare organisations, which neuter and ID chip their own cats. To sum up, what has brought me here is the fact that we are in a unique position. We have the wildcat to think about and it is a big responsibility. There are fewer of them than there are tigers, and poorer countries than ours are doing a lot more on conservation to help tigers. We need to help the Scottish wildcat action project with its legacy. It can start by back-breeding the wildcats that are left, but we have to do the rest by creating a habitat that is safe for them to thrive in in the future. In my view, and in the view of most other people who have signed the petition, we also have a responsibility to keep our domestic cats safe and not let this carnage and waste of lives happen. I would not like to see Scotland on the wrong side of history, so I have brought the petition to you so that I can share my thinking and have you ask me questions.

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Public Petitions Committee 07 December 2017

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