Acat and kitten crisis in the South East is continuing to place pressure on local veterinary clinics and rescue groups.


While hot spots in the Blue Lake city vary, the Mount Gambier Railway Lands, Cave Gardens and local schools have all at times seen an increase of cats.


Limestone Coast Vet owner and veterinarian Teresa Priddle encouraged owners to desex and microchip their furry feline friends, with payment plans available at most vets amid the rising cost of living.


The South Australian Dog and Cat Management Regulations 2017 outline that a dog or cat must be microchipped before they are sold or reach 12 weeks of age.


“The microchipping laws came in (effect) in 2017, so it has been quite a time since then,” Ms Priddle said.


“We are still seeing a lot of cats come in that people have picked up as stray cats because they are roaming in their yard or whatever and they’re still not microchipped.


“A lot of them are unclaimed and a lot of the younger ones come in and they’re not microchipped and they’re not desexed.


“Cats hit puberty around four months of age, so quite young, and then if they are allowed outdoor access then obviously they are going to wander because they are looking for a partner and then they get lost.


“If cats get pregnant at four months of age the kittens are born and the mum’s only six months of age – and then cats can have two litters of kittens a year.


“They make terrible teenage mums, especially if they are out on the street having to fend for themselves.”


Ms Priddle called on the Mount Gambier City Council to take more responsibility for the problem.


“The issue currently is that council do not have to take any responsibility for cats, so they don’t,” she said.


“We are in a hard place because council are telling people to just bring them to the vet or they hire out a trap, so people pay to hire a cat trap from the council and the council just say ‘when you trap a cat, just take it into the vet’.


“Then the people think ‘well we have already paid to use the trap, so we should not have to pay any extra’.


“It puts a lot of pressure on us that maybe council should probably take a bit of responsibility too.


“It is just disappointing that microchipping, which is a basic thing, is not being enforced, and desexing as well.”


The Mount Gambier Council Dog and Pet Management Plan 2024-28 states beyond supplying cat trapping cages for a hire fee, the “City of Mount Gambier does not currently actively manage cats”.


“If a trapped cat is identifiable via a collar, tag with contact details or microchip, then the cat must be returned to the owner by the person who trapped the cat,” the plan states.


“If unidentifiable then the cat must be taken to the council’ s nominated veterinary provider, who will decide whether the cat is to be euthanised or rehomed.”


The House of Assembly introduced the Dog and Cat Management Amendment Bill 2024 last year to propose changes to the Dog and Cat Management Act 1995.


The proposed changes will provide a clear process for councils when managing seized cats and enabling lost cats to be returned to owners (based on the way in which councils handle seized dogs).


The Department for Environment and Water will prepare a state-wide cat management strategy for public consultation in mid-2025.


The Mount Gambier Council Dog and Pet Management Plan 2024-28 states the “City of Mount Gambier will review its cat management approach during the life of this plan, once the legislative requirements are confirmed”.


“Council however acknowledges that other strategies can be employed in the interim to educate and support the community to responsibly own cats and reduce the number of semi-owned and unowned cats within the community,” the plan states.


Ms Priddle said vet clinics try to find owners, refer cats to already full rescue groups or as a last resort, unfortunately euthanise the animals; most of which comes at a cost to the clinic.


“We could have anywhere from three to 10 stray cats that people want to bring in each week,” she said.


“Most people I think expect they will bring them in and they will be rehomed if owners are not found.


“How we deal with it depends on each individual clinic, but we have to be responsible for euthanising them at our cost because obviously people do not expect they will need to pay to bring in a stray cat.


“With dogs you have to hold them for 72 hours to allow the owners to come forward, so we do like to put them (cats) on Facebook because there is no other real option.


“It has sort of worked out for us to have a cat in for three days we have to feed it and clean up litter and things like that.


“If we euthanise it then there’s a cost to that and then our bodies go to a pet cremation company and they are cremated, so there is a cost to us to get that done. It is about $240 – $250 a cat if we did that.


“Obviously we try and get them into a rescue group, but the rescue groups are just overwhelmed.”