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Unlike dogs, cats in Maricopa County currently lack the protection that's provided through a licensing law, so many animal shelters in the area either don't accept cats or charge fees to take them in, which results in neglect, abuse, and suffering. When shelters don't accept all animals or they charge high fees to take them in, those who are turned away are often abandoned. Cats can also become the victims of hoarders who keep them in inhumane and inadequate conditions at unregulated "rescue" shelters or can be cruelly killed by people who can't or won't care for them any longer. After a Phoenix man was recently arrested for killing an unspecified number of cats by beating them to death with a sledgehammer, he told authorities that he couldn't find a shelter to accept them and no one wanted to adopt them.
Maricopa County Animal Care and Control confirmed that it requires a $51 fee per cat to accept them from their owners, and its website states that the taxpayer-funded facility won't accept homeless, at-risk cats without a $96 fee per cat. There's no charge to those who rescue lost and homeless dogs, and this discrepancy exists because cats lack needed protection under the law.
Animal shelters that do accept cats report an enormous gap between the number of lost dogs who are reunited with their families and the number of cats who are, but cat-licensing laws have been shown to get more lost cats home and reduce intake and euthanasia rates at animal shelters in communities that have passed them.
Requiring cat guardians to license their feline family members would promote responsible cat guardianship, could provide needed additional funding to subsidize spay and neuter surgeries for low-income county residents, and would reduce cat homelessness, suffering, and death. Please send an e-mail asking the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to amend the county's dog-licensing law to extend the same protection to cats!