23/08/2026
π± Let's talk about cat containment and desexing
On 18 August, City of Onkaparinga discussed cat containment. On the same day, PetRescue published an article about why mandatory desexing laws haven't reduced cat numbers. The timing is a coincidence. The connection isn't.
https://www.petrescue.com.au/library/articles/truth-mandatory-cat-desexing
πΎ The law already says desex your cat
In South Australia, desexing has been mandatory for all cats born on or after 1 July 2018. So why are there still so many giveaway kittens on Facebook and Gumtree?
Because a law that tells people to do something doesn't help them do it. Desexing costs money and takes transport. The people who ask us for help often have neither. As far as we know, the closest vet offering low-cost desexing is at Colonel Light Gardens, which may as well be another state if you don't drive.
And there's a whole category of cat the law doesn't reach at all. Semi-owned cats. The ones being fed in someone's backyard by a person who cares about them but doesn't consider themselves the owner. Nobody is legally required to desex those cats, and nobody can afford to.
So they breed. Since we started in 2021, we've worked properties with eleven cats, twenty, thirty-four, forty-five. Every one of them started with one or two undesexed cats and someone who couldn't afford the vet bill.
When people ring the council, they're told to ring the RSPCA. When they ring the RSPCA, they're turned away too, because the RSPCA doesn't have the capacity. That's how kittens end up tied in a bag on the side of the road. People do things they'd never imagine doing when they've run out of options.
πΎ The part that keeps getting left out
We watched the recording of the council meeting. The conversation was about owned cats and feral cats. Unowned and semi-owned cats weren't mentioned.
That's the gap we work in every day, and the distinction matters more than it sounds.
Feral cats live and breed away from people and don't depend on humans for food. The Dog and Cat Management Board supports feral cat management in remote areas, and only where the methods don't put domestic cats at risk.
The cats we deal with aren't feral. They live in suburban streets, they're fed by people who care about them, and most of them are socialisable. Since the 2024/25 financial year, we've only desexed and returned nine adults who were genuinely happier where they were. Every other cat found a home, apart from four males we're still working with.
Those cats need desexing, not enforcement.
πΎ We support containment. It just isn't enough on its own
We advocate for containment for owned cats. Every cat we adopt out goes to an indoor home or one with an enclosure.
But a containment by-law reaches cats that have an owner to follow it. It cannot reach a cat nobody owns. Onkaparinga will receive a report in October on what a 24/7 containment by-law would involve. Our position is simple: run subsidised desexing alongside it, or the by-law will regulate the cats that were never the problem while the rest keep breeding.
The same council motion asks the State Government when the draft Cat Management Strategy will be released for consultation. We support that, and we've been asking for an update on it too.
πΎ This isn't theoretical
The City of Salisbury already does it. Council works with a rescue, the Cat Adoption Foundation, on the properties where semi-owned cats are breeding. In council's own words, they work with residents willing to help, they desex to break the breeding cycle, and they partner with residents to take ownership of some of the cats.
It works at scale, too. In Banyule in Victoria, council ran a free desexing and microchipping program. Between 2013 and 2021, impoundments fell 66 per cent, euthanasia fell 82 per cent and complaints fell 36 per cent. Then the funding was wound back and the costs returned. Between 2022 and 2024, intake rose 140 per cent.
It works while it's funded. It stops working when it isn't.
We sent Onkaparinga our subsidised desexing proposal after our roundtable on 14 August, and we've asked for it to be considered alongside the October report.
πΎ On who pays
We've heard it said that ratepayers can't be expected to fund subsidised desexing. Ratepayers are already funding it. They're paying for the staff who take the calls, the traps that can't be used, and the rangers who attend properties with nothing to offer.
Spring is almost here. We know what's coming, and we know we can't take them all.
πΎ What you can do π
Cr Kim Davis - City of Onkaparinga - Pimpala Ward and Cr Marion Themeliotis - Thalassa Ward - City of Onkaparinga have both asked residents for their views on cat containment. Comments made before the October report will count.
1. Comment on their posts. Tell them you support containment AND subsidised desexing together.
2. Email the council. A short template is in the comments below. Two minutes.
You don't have to be a cat person. Spraying, fighting and noise are some of the most common nuisance complaints councils receive, and they're connected to undesexed behaviour. This fixes that too.
