Moggies, doggies find new homes
The number of stray or homeless animals in South Canterbury has gone up, with a lack of desexing some of the issue, but there continues to be a demand in adopting rescue pets, organisations say.
Street Cats South Canterbury has had the largest litter season on record, with 649 kittens brought in between June 1, 2021, and May 31, 2022, while for the SPCA, the number of animals coming in has been climbing.
Despite the increase of kittens and cats collected, they were still all finding homes, Street Cats South Canterbury programme director Karen Sole said.
She put some of this down to the comparatively lower cost of buying a kitten from Street Cats .
The organisation’s latest figures show an increase from 604 kittens collected from June 1, 2020, to May 31, 2021, 559 in the previous year, and and in years prior the recorded numbers were 559, 485, 470, and 352 kittens.
However, Sole was not attributing the steady increase to an overall increase in the stray population, but rather an increased awareness about the organisation.
‘‘The growth is because more people know about us now.’’
Sole said the organisation receives most calls from lifestyle blockers and farmers who have had the kittens wander onto their property.
She believed that in the past, some property owners might have ‘‘just ignored the kittens’’ .
Meanwhile, figures from the SPCA across Canterbury show from January to June 2022, 1830 animals had been brought into their care, up from 1793 in 2021 and 1561 in 2020.
‘‘We have certainly noticed an increase of animals – particularly for dogs and puppies. We believe this comes down to people not desexing their animals,’’ Natasha Sutton, SPCA’s Christchurch centre manager, said.
Pet owners aren’t giving their animals the snip because of the cost involved, according to SPCA’s science officer Dr Alison Vaughan.
‘‘Cost is a known barrier to desexing and SPCA is particularly concerned that tight finances, in combination with the backlog in desexing surgeries due to Covid-19 and vet shortages, could cause people to put off this important procedure,’’ Vaughan said.
‘‘We encourage people to take advantage of low cost desexing offers, such as SPCA’s Snip ‘n’ Chip.’’
SPCA’s Snip’n’Chip is an initiative that gives out $20 vouchers to pet owners to desex and microchip their cats.
In May 2022, when the initiative was last offered in Timaru, it sold out in two days.
However, Timaru SPCA centre manager Barry Fairbrother said there had not been a noticeable increase in the number of animals coming into the centre.
‘‘Most cats/kittens are adopted within a month of arriving, but dogs often take a little longer to find a home, particularly during the winter months,’’ Fairbrother said.
Timaru’s dog registration statistics from 2021, the latest recorded year, showed 9182 registered and of that, only 4908 had been desexed.
Timaru District Council’s communications manager Stephen Doran said he was unable to provide a comment on why only half the dogs in Timaru were desexed.
‘‘It’s the owner’s choice unless a specific order is made, but we do incentivise it through lower fees,’’ Doran said.
In 2019, 32 dogs were impounded, 31 in 2020, 19 in 2021 and nine for the year to date. Three of these were animals awaiting adoption.