‘Nuisance’ pets in South Australia council’s firing line

If you’re one of those pet owners who likes to let their cats wander around at night, you probably shouldn’t move to this town.

Pet owners who love to let their cats wander the bush at night will no longer be welcome in a South Australian town after its local council passed strict new laws this week.

From early next year, cat owners in Mount Barker, 30 minutes southeast of Adelaide, will have to register their pets and make sure their feline friends are on their property between 8pm and 7am.

The new by-law will also allow council staff to penalise owners if their pets cause a “nuisance”.

Cat owners can be fined if their pets are caught killing native wildlife or defecating or urinating on other people’s properties.

The council is also introducing laws that will limit cat ownership to two per person.

Cats will be under strict regulation in Mount Barker from next year. Picture: Tolga Akmen/AFP

South Australians living in the Mount Barker area that already own more than two cats will be exempt from that law.

Mount Barker Council is the latest in a handful of South Australian councils to pass regulations regarding cats.

By 2022, cat owners in nearby Adelaide Hills will be required to keep their pets on their properties at all times.

Mount Barker councillors voted in favour of the tough kitty controls earlier this week, with Mount Barker health and safety manager Jamie Tann telling The Messengerthere was strong community support.

“We’re allowing cats to roam for part of the day, but at night when they’re most active and have the most impact on wildlife, we’re expecting them to be kept inside,” he said.

“The safest place for a cat to be is at home — that’s the message we’re trying to get across.”

Mr Tann said the new by-laws would also allow council workers to set up “covert surveillance” if they received reports of “nuisance behaviour” from local cats.

“We’re not going to have someone running around at night picking up the cats,” he said.

“But if someone says my neighbour’s cat is repeatedly coming into my yard, we’ll have covert cameras that we can set up in the yard and we could use that as evidence to say your cat is causing a nuisance.”

Mount Barker Council received more than 500 responses when it asked its locals what they thought of cats in the area.

“It was obvious that people are quite passionate about cats roaming the streets,” mayor Ann Ferguson told The Guardian .

RSPCA South Australia head Paul Stevenson said the state needed to be careful not to “demonise and vilify cats”.

“In general we support councils introducing measures like curfews so our only concern with the Mount Barker measures is that the devil is in the detail,” he told the publication.

“Most of the people who use traps don’t particularly like cats and there are huge problems with that,” he said. “Some of the cruelty and suffering inflicted on cats through the use of traps is quite horrendous, and I’d just say one of the things we have to be very careful of all round Australia is to not to demonise and vilify cats.”

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Originally published as ‘Nuisance’ pets in South Australia council’s firing line