Canberrans love animals, including our pets or native wildlife. The Draft ACT Cat Plan (the draft plan) is seeking community views on how we can all better manage cats for the health, welfare and safety of both domestic cats and native animals.

The purpose of the draft plan is to engage the community on how we work together to improve our laws, services and programs for managing all cats—domestic and feral. Cats that are not responsibly owned (micro-chipped, desexed and contained) are at risk of harm to themselves and continue to harm native wildlife.

You must desex your cat unless:

• the cat is less than three months old
• the keeper of the cat holds a sexually entire permit issued by the Registrar of DAS.

You must microchip your cat. A cat of any age can be microchipped.

You may not keep four or more cats unless you have a multiple cats licence.

You must contain your cat if you live in a cat containment area.

Find out more about your responsibilities as a cat owner.

To reduce the number of unwanted cats born each year that may become neglected and abandoned.

Microchipping is an effective way for animal shelters and vets to identify lost cats to return to their owners.

Microchipping is a safe procedure where a silicon chip, approximately the size of a grain of rice, is implanted under the skin of the animal.

Cat containment means taking measures to prevent your cat from roaming and keeping your cat on your premises 24 hours a day. Cat containment is compulsory in some ACT suburbs. There are also many people who choose to voluntarily contain their cat.

Find out more about current cat containment laws in the ACT.

There are two key reasons to contain your cat.

• Safe Cat – The idea that cats need to roam outdoors has changed. Keeping your cat contained avoids risks and improves their welfare and safety. Contained cats live longer and are less likely to suffer diseases or sustain injuries through fighting with other cats or dogs, being hit by cars or other misadventure.
• Safe Wildlife - Cats are natural predators and domestic cats have been shown to hunt and kill a wide variety of native and non-native wildlife in our region, as found in an ACT study.

The ACT Government pursuant to Section 81 of the Domestic Animals Act 2000, has declared the following areas to be cat containment areas:

• Bonner
• Crace
• Coombs
• Denman Prospect
• Forde
• Gungahlin Town Centre east
• Jacka
• Lawson
• Macnamara
• Molonglo
• Moncrieff
• Strathnairn
• The Fair at Watson
• Throsby
• Wright
• Taylor
• Whitlam.

A map showing cat containment areas is also available.

Cats can happily live indoors especially when they have been trained to be an indoor cat from a young age. Suggestions to increase activity and stimulation of contained cats include toys, scratching posts, vertical and horizontal climbing spaces, walks outside on a harness and lead and access to an outdoor escape-proof cat enclosure or cat run.

The RSPCA has more information on how to ensure your home is a feline-friendly, stimulating environment.

Advice, tips, and tools to help you transition your cat to a safer and happier life at home is available through the Safe Cat, Safe Wildlife website.

Cat registration is an official database of microchipped and registered cats. An online registry would allow pet owners to update contact details, report missing pets, change the ownership of pets, and, if applicable, pay a registration fee.

The Registry would be managed by the ACT Government as part of the ACT Government’s commitment to strengthen animal welfare standards and promote responsible pet ownership.

A cat registration system would support compliance and enforcement and improve systems for reuniting lost pets with their owners.

All cats are the same species (Felis catus). However, for management purposes, we define cat populations using different categories. RSPCA Australia defines cats as either domestic or feral and separates domestic cats into three subcategories based on their relationship with humans: These include:

• Owned
• Semi-owned
• Unowned

The flow of cat populations between these categories is interconnected. To effectively manage the welfare of cats and their impacts on the environment, the entire population must be managed in an integrated way.

Domestic cats have some dependence (direct or indirect) on people. Feral cats have no relationship with or dependence on humans, and reproduce in the wild.

A cat that is cared for by a specific identifiable person. Owned cats are directly dependent on people and usually sociable.

Semi-owned cats are fed and cared for by people who do not consider they own the cat. Semi-owned cats may be associated with one or more households and sociability/friendliness to humans varies.

Unowned cats are indirectly dependent on people with some having casual and temporary interactions with different people. They are of varying sociability, including some who are unsocialised to humans, and some may live in groups (e.g. around rubbish tips, drains, food outlets).

A stray cat is a general term for roaming cat that may or may not have an owner.