A North Carolina town is cracking down on free-ranging cats and warning pet owners to keep kittens outdoors on leashes.
For more than half a century, Cary, North Carolina (a town of 176,000 people outside Raleigh) has had an ordinance in place requiring all pets, including cats, to be leashed when leaving their owners' property. There is.
Similar rules exist in other Wake County towns and cities in the state.
But Cary's leash law caused a stir on social media earlier this week after the town's Animal Services Department issued a warning to residents. on our Facebook page “Cats must be leashed when not on the owner's property.”
Local authorities say cats, a popular pet, kill an alarming amount of birds each year, are the largest predators of small mammals, and can transmit diseases to wildlife and humans alike. Here are some of the risks of leaving things unchecked.
“The safest thing for an outdoor cat is to teach it to be a domestic cat,” Animal Protection said. “Indoor cats generally live longer and are not at risk of being hit by cars or injured by other animals.”
Tens of thousands of homes in Cary have at least one cat. Supervisor Chuck Hagist said Animal Services receives about 1,000 calls each year about stray cats, feral cats and kittens. told the News & Observer.
“Cats don't need to be on a leash on your property, but if they venture off the street onto your neighbor's property, that's where the problem starts,” Hagist says.
Pet owners who violate leash rules can be fined between $20 and $250, depending on the number of violations.
For a fifth violation, a cat roaming without a leash may be caught and taken to a shelter, where the owner may have to pay to adopt it.
Hagist said his agency is not actively looking for off-leash cats, but urges owners to understand the risks to themselves and those around them. Told.
“Coyotes are killing cats. There's also hawks and owls,” Hagist said. “The lifespan of an outdoor cat is about half that of an indoor cat.”
Despite their relatively small size, cats are highly skilled predators that hunt birds, lizards, and other small creatures.
The American Bird Conservancy previously announced that an estimated 2.4 billion birds are killed by cats each year in the United States alone.
Cat owners often build outdoor enclosures called “catios'' to keep curious kittens confined to their property while enjoying nature, or they build outside enclosures like the ones commonly used for dogs. There is no option to install a fence.
But not all Cary residents are on board with the cat crackdown.
In 2019, a resident who did not own a cat started an online petition asking the Cary Town Council to repeal the leash ordinance because it was “against the nature of cats to be leashed.”
The Change.org petition has been signed by 267 like-minded cat lovers.
