Cats aren’t gonna take this well…
If you’ve got any experience with cats, odds are you’re fully aware of their IDGAF attitudes. They only come to you for food and the occasional burst of affection, all before they’re gone into the night for god knows how long. Well now, they might have to lay rest their nocturnal habits, as a new nighttime cat curfew could soon be introduced into Australia.
The potential new measure is in response to a feral cat pandemic which is taking hold across the nation. Naturally, it hasn’t been getting a whole lot of attention because of the, ahem, other pandemic, but it’s definitely real. Millions of animals have died and cat populations have exploded as a result, and the situation is getting seriously dire now. So much so that a parliamentary inquiry is looking into how to limit the impact of feral cats.
Speaking on the situation, Inquiry chair and Member for Fairfax Ted O’Brien said “Feral cats kill over three billion native animals a year which equates to a kill rate of more than 1,100 per cat. These are truly horrific numbers.
“One of the great tragedies of last year’s Black Summer Bushfires was the loss of wildlife, with between one and three billion animals perishing. To think that feral cats kill more wildlife on an annual basis really put this problem in perspective. Feral cats still need to be culled, but it’s going to take time before we have the technology to rid these lethal carnivores from our natural environment at scale. This is why we need a new national conservation mission.”
So far several local government areas have introduced penalties to stop cats roaming around at night but now it’s floated on a national scale under the umbrella of Project Noah, a campaign which is aimed at reducing the billions of animals killed every year.
However, it’s unlikely a measure like this will be passed any time soon, so your adorable little fur-balls will still be able to take their nighttime strolls and cause absolute panic when they go missing for hours at a time for the foreseeable future.
