As a cat lover, I hate to say it, but Tanya Plibersek is right

When I first met Violet, she was a tiny runt of a thing, so small she could fit in the palm of my hand. Lost, terrified and roaming the streets, she was a dumped Christmas present, the vet said before adding the words that are like kryptonite to any animal lover: without a microchip or anyone to claim her, she’d have to be put down.

Within days of taking her home, Violet became the heart and soul of our uni share house. We didn’t mind that she used the curtains as her climbing pole or that the second-hand dining table became her preferred sunbaking spot. We found it endearing that she could spend hours chasing a laser pointer and drank water exclusively from a running tap.

The federal government is considering introducing new measures to curb the impact feral and domestic cats are having on native animals.Credit: Fairfax

The regularity with which she got stuck on the roof was deeply annoying for my housemates who had to climb up and rescue her, and her propensity to urinate in the overnight bag of my boyfriend every time he stayed over managed to literally piss him off to the point that he dumped me and I found myself at risk of becoming a clichéd single cat lady.

But for the most part, we loved her and quickly fell into a routine of letting her outside in the morning, making sure she was inside before we left for the day, adding a feed calendar to the fridge to avoid double dinners, and giving her a pre-bedtime roam outside.

Then came the day when, about to head to a uni lecture, I opened the laundry door to find Violet beaming with pride, covered in muck and presenting us with what she thought was the ultimate gift: a dead possum. Mice were one thing, we reasoned when debating what to do, but a possum was another ball game.

A couple of months later, after she’d learned how to disable the bell collar we’d fitted her with in the hopes of finding a happy medium that could protect animals and allow her to roam free, she bequeathed us a lizard. Her final act, before we implemented a full-time indoor rule once and for all, was bringing home a kookaburra.

When Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek announced last week that the federal government was planning to crack down on feral and domestic cats in a bid to protect our native wildlife, it reminded me of the deep internal conflict that came from owning a pet who, for all her many endearing qualities and sweet nature, also had an innate desire to kill native animals.

“They [cats] are one of the main reasons Australia is the mammal extinction capital of the world,” Plibersek said, while also noting cats “were the primary cause of Australia’s two latest extinctions.”

According to research within the government’s paper, feral cats kill an average of 1.5 billion native mammals, birds, reptiles and frogs a year, while domesticated pet cats with access to the outdoors kill more than 500 million.

In a bid to curb these numbers, the government has said it will consider introducing cat curfews and potentially limiting the number of cats people can own in particular areas.

Telling pet owners their furry family member plays a significant role in the growing extinction crisis was always going to be about as popular as England making it into the soccer World Cup final. No one wants to believe their pet is part of the problem even in instances where they know they are.

The cat my flatmates and I loved could be sweet and cuddly, but she also had the predisposition to hunt and kill animals and the know-how to remove a warning collar. And so, as unpopular as it may be to say, Plibersek is right. Pet cats are the reason Australia has half a billion fewer native animals than it did the year before and something has to be done about it sooner rather than later.

As for Violet? She rebelled against her forced domestication. For a while, she meowed more, clawed more, amped her aloofness up to 11, and briefly resumed her favourite pastime of urinating in overnight bags. She paced at the back door in an attempt to break our collective resolve and be given the outside freedom she craved.

But over time she adapted. She came to love her inside life of being doted on while doing extremely little. No doubt the local wildlife loved it more though, we never found another on our back step again.

Katy Hall is The Age’s deputy opinion editor.

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