At the most recent meeting of council, Councillor Gulick brought forth a notice of motion to look at the Animal Responsibility bylaw with an eye towards revising it.
The trouble, she says, is the bylaw focuses heavily on dogs. While the bylaw allows for licensing cats, most of the rest of the language in the bylaw is written around dogs. Section 6, for instance, talks about nuisance dogs. Section 7 about high-risk dogs. Section 8? Dangerous dogs. But what about nuisance cats?
She says there’s been a lot of discussion about cats online recently. Cats wandering freely about the town. Cats pooping in people’s gardens. She would like to see the bylaw address these issues.
Councillor Dusseault says not all the cats are roaming because owners have let them out. “I’d be interested to see how many of these cats are wandering free and how many have been left behind by previous owners.”
Mayor Krakowka says in the past, the District worked with the SPCA out of Dawson. “Maybe we need to work with them to again, to spay and neuter cats that are wandering about. I hear it from the residents. I remember having this discussion when we updated the bylaws. At the time, some councillors didn’t think we should even have tags for cats.”
But, he says, it might be difficult to enforce. “How do you catch a cat? There are ways, but it might waste staff time. As residents, we need to have respect for other people in this community. I’ve had people send pictures to me of their garden, full of cat feces. I’m not saying it can’t be done or it shouldn’t, but how can it be enforced?”
He moves that council discuss it at an upcoming Policies and Priorities meeting.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.