Friday 18 July 2008

CairnsBlog cartoon by Circusmouse

~ Mayor Schier of Cairns Regional Council is proposing
to make it
mandatory to microchip and register cats and dogs.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

We all know what 'must be done'! Camps must be built and the canine and feline problem can finally have its final solution.

Anonymous said...

There should be a curfew on kids and any out after dark without a parent should be chipped. The chips could be linked via the mobile phone system to the Council CCTV security cameras. Bicycle theft in Cairns would them become almost irrelevant.

Anonymous said...

Chipping the damm kids is a fine idea....you can start with some from my neighbourhood !!
Seriously its not such a bad idea, would stop wasting lots of police time, and court time.

AND IT MIGHT MAKE PARENTS MORE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR LITTLE DARLINGS.

It would stop the parents saying.."Oh my son would never go there, do that....we would have proof. Well thats if the chips were monitored. It would stop truancy, shoplifting, car stealing, oh and if we were to go further, we could have hubby chipped too. Then we would know the truth if he has been shagging the secretary !!!!

Anonymous said...

Wot about having Kirsten Lesina as Eva Braun?

Anonymous said...

Seriously on the microchipping - I don't see a problem with it for dogs & cats [as for the kids, it's tempting, but would incur the wrath of the civil liberties crew - & I wouldn't fancy being microchipped.
However, dog owners - picture this. You've taken the dogs for a run at the beach, they're wet & sandy. You give them a rinse under the tap at the beach, & take off their sandy collars. On the way home, you have a nasty car accident & are rendered unconscious. Your dogs panic & in the melee run away. No collars, no microchip. Say you are then in a coma for several days - no-one knows your dogs have taken off, you can't tell anyone because you're unconscious. Now, does microchipping sound so silly at this juncture? It's a five-second event, placing a chip the size of a grain of rice at the back of the neck. I've watched it done, as my dogs' breeder is a vet. It was done at six weeks, & by the time the chip was in, and a treat given to puppy, it was all over. No trauma, no harm.
I used to be of the position that MY dogs would never run away, but if you take the traffic accident scenario above into account, it really isn't silly, is it?
And pussy-cats get scared for various reasons & run off - it always amazes me when people turn up at the vet surgery just cuddling their cats, without the cat in a cage. I had a friend a few years ago who was moving house, & just popped their beloved cat in the car, cageless. She stopped to get petrol, cat got scared of dog barking in car next to hers, cat escaped across six-lane highway, never to be seen again (she searched for 3 hours, calling it). It normally was a well-behaved calm puss - & 'would never have run off'.
One thing I'd love Council to do would be to is to give Animal Management some more teeth & money [I think there are moves afoot] & reinforce the laws on people breeding animals to become registered breeders - & here I'm talking cross-breeds as well as purebreds. The figures of those animals in Cairns alone that are euthanased because they can't find a home is disgusting. About 50,000 dogs & puppies & about 30,000 cats & kittens are euthanased by the RSPCA Australia-wide, simply because there is an oversupply of animals to homes.
I also think that pet shops should not be selling puppies or kittens as it is too easy for people to impulse-buy, & then when the animal is becoming too noisy/time-consuming/expensive, they are able to dump it.
All responsible animal breeders want animals returned for rehousing if they don't work out. People who breed 'casually' are not, largely, responsible for the welfare of the animal once it's past their front gate. It's just not good enough, & totally unfair to produce animals when they might have a good chance of becoming homeless through no fault of their own.
If you look at the YAPS website of dogs & cats available for rehousing, nearly 99% of the animals are cross-bred. Makes you think, eh?