Locking up the Felines: Cat Curfews Down Under

Nothing inspires confidence in the silliness of the human species than its efforts to understand the workings of others. This, at least, makes an improvement from wanting to biblically subjugate, enslave and eat members of the animal kingdom. But when efforts are made to understand what the domestic cat (surely an oxymoronic category) is up to, humankind is bound to come up short.

The issue of imposing curfews upon cats as if they were disobedient, wandering children is one such symptom. While the feral cat is an apparatus of mass killing when it comes to wildlife, Felix catus, that oddly named domestic cat, is more than willing to add its share to the mortality rate. This is most evident in Australia, a country whose native fauna evolved without sustained exposure to such skilful, relentless predators. In their 2020 study published in Wildlife Research, the authors, after examining the results of 66 different studies on pet cats and their influence on the country’s wildlife, issue a shriek of concern. Each roaming pet feline kills, on average, 186 reptiles, birds and mammals a year, most of them native to the continent. This equates to 4,440 to 8,100 animals per square kilometre per year for areas occupied by pet cats. The annual holocaust for such rampaging roamers comes to 390 million animals. The proposed solution is stern and absolutist: permanent, confined home detention. (Predation rates, the argument goes, are not reduced because a cat hunts at night or during the day; only the type of animal changes.)

On July 27, councillors of the City of Boroondara, located in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, adopted an order requiring cats to be kept inside their owner’s property during the nighttime. According to the Council’s announcement, the curfew was adopted, along with various measures, with various things in mind. Among them was seeking to better understand “general cat management” in the locality; encourage “responsible cat ownership, including cat registration, microchipping and de-sexing”; offering better support for cat owners in terms of managing their cats; improving the way “semi-owned and stray cats” were better managed; and protecting the wildlife and diversity of Boroondara.

These measures have the whiff of satisfying the conscience of policy makers – they can claim they are supposedly doing something useful for native species – while ignoring the natural instincts of the animal the subject of the restriction. In truth, they show how little is understood about these resourceful animals. History offers numerous examples of debates on this subject at the council level. The Port Lincoln City Council in South Australia, for instance, debated a discussion paper drafted by the State Government in August 1992 insisting that councils, in the words of the local paper, “take urgent steps to control feral and stray cats.” The general mood, however, was that “cat registrations and cat curfews were impractical.”

The concerns of residents have not always matched the policies of local councils keen to defer broader responsibilities to other bureaucratic agencies and authorities. Why do in government what you can expect others to do? Local governments, not always enthused about having jurisdiction over animal management issues, have preferred to look to State governments for paternal guidance and instruction. In November 2006, the Hills Messenger, a local publication for Port Adelaide in South Australia, reported the cold rebuff of Mitcham Council to “the call of more than 3,000 residents by refusing to introduce stronger cat controls.” This number was reached from the responses of some 3,500 individuals to an annual animal management survey. A hefty majority of 87% agreed to cat controls, including registration, cat curfews, desexing and confinement. 

No such plans found their way into the council’s Draft Animal Management Plan 2007-2011, as the councillors believed that a state-wide, rather than local approach to management, was needed. One Ian Robilliard of Belair, who had attended, along with 45 others, a council-run animal management public meeting earlier in March 2006, expressed grumbling dissatisfaction. “I’m not against cats but I don’t like them when they’re in my backyard and eating the birds and the lizards.” Bill Stronach of Blackwood was furious at the tendency of cats to be “killers”; they needed to be kept indoors while the RSPCA [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] development manager, Wendy White, agreed heartily, adding compulsory desexing as an option. The response from John Carruthers of the Hills Veterinary Centre and member of the council’s animal management consultative committee, was one of calming dismissiveness. “Most (native) wildlife is killed by feral cats, not pet cats.” Those lovely pet cats again.

Certain state laws in Australia also prevent local councils from issuing cat containment ordinances except with dispensation from state parliamentary committees. But the issue of restraining these adept killers is obviously troubling enough to even make it to the desks of state politicians. Besides, they are votes to think about. In 2024, the Biodiversity Council’s Concerns Report found that a mere 8% (or 1 in 12) people were opposed to policies “requiring cat owners to keep their cat contained to their property.” In February this year, Western Australia’s Local Government Minister Hannah Beazley promised changes that would alleviate the need for local councils to seek committee approval at the parliamentary level for containing cats. Eventually, some “model local law” could be developed standardising the approach. The urge to pontificate on the virtues of such restrictions was also forthcoming. “Cats who are contained to owners’ properties, they live longer. And there’s also evidence from the RSPCA to say that owners of contained cats spend about 400% less on vet fees than roaming cats.”

The publicity campaign behind cat containment can assume a puerile, even emetic note. Absurdly, anthropomorphic self-justification leads to the following babble of fabricated reassurance from the Invasive Species Council. “What do Paws, Precious, Clementine, Rasputia, Jemia and Fat Boii have in common?” a social post teasingly asks. “They are living their best life, safely contained at home.” How do these fantasists know? More likely is that such measures are keeping natural killers contained and, during the courses of their containment, increasingly deranged. We are instead led to believe that these creatures are leading a life of splendid, fattened domesticity, their need to slay cruelly pacified.

The Australian Pet Welfare Foundation (APWF) is also of the view that cats be contained at night and confined to the owner’s property during the day, so long as the environment is “comfortable” and “meet’s the cat’s physical and mental needs.” (Where is a cat psychologist when you need one?) The organisation concedes that mandatory containment of cats at all times “is not a simple fix for roaming cats, wildlife protection or shelter intake.” Wandering cats are often strays with no owner, and even when they do have one, containment can fail due to “housing limitations, lack of financial resources and concerns about the welfare of confined cats.”

The following endorsement, and suggestion, is made by Jaan Dielenberg, a university fellow from Charles Darwin University who admits to owning cats: “Requiring pet cats to be contained is a sound policy choice. But to realise the full benefits, we also need to invest in effective communication for communities, provide rebates to help contain cats, and make sure the rules are followed.” If only we could ask Tobermory, the cat made famous by H.H. Munro (Saki), what he thought of this whole business.