South Australian Council Introduces Strict Law Limiting People To Just Two Cats Each

There are loads of cat people around the world and the idea of limiting the number of felines they could own sounds like hell.

Well, these type of people should stay away from an area in South Australia because a council has voted to do just that.

Mount Barker, which is around 30 minutes southeast of Adelaide, has voted in strict new laws that limit the number of cats a person can own to just two.

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The council also introduced a curfew for felines, meaning they'll have to be on their owner's property from 8pm until 7am.

In addition to those two pretty harsh rules, owners will be penalised if the cat is a nuisance. According to news.com.au, that includes cats caught killing native wildlife or defecating or urinating on other people's properties.

Cat owners will have to be extra vigilant because it sounds like the council will be ruling with an iron fist on this matter.

Mount Barker health and safety manager Jamie Tann told The Messenger the council had support from the majority of residents.

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"A lot of people have mentioned they want [the] council to play a role in cat management," Mr Tann said.

"We're allowing cats to roam for part of the day, but at night when they're most active and have the most impact on wildlife, we're expecting them to be kept inside.

"The safest place for a cat to be is at home - that's the message we're trying to get across."

While they aren't going to have cat inspectors out at night like car parking administrators, they did say they will take neighbour's complaints seriously.

"If someone says my neighbour's cat is repeatedly coming into my yard, we'll have covert cameras that we can set up in the yard and we could use that as evidence to say your cat is causing a nuisance," Mr Tann said.

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If you think that it's outrageous for a jurisdiction to be saying what you can do with your cats, Mount Baker isn't alone.

The West Australian government was looking at legislation that could ban cats from going outside at night or even altogether.

WARA president Dene Lawrence told Perth Now: "Greater enforcement powers to authorised officers and further amendments to dog barking offences are also required."

According to the Daily Mail, around 25 people in Perth are taken to hospital with animal related bites every week.

Legislators upped the fine if their dog bites a human to $10,000 or one year in prison in 2013, however a review has found that those penalties are inadequate. So this could penalty could be raised again.

Topics: Community, Animals, Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

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