this just popped up on the MoD RSS:
Government seeks views on introducing compulsory cat microchipping in England.
www.gov.uk
Seems to me a pointless waste of time.
As we all know, dogs are not the same as cats and they live with owners in a different way. A dog is typically kept indoors and then walked along with the owner. If they are 'lost', then this may be because of an escape from an unsupervised visit to a back garden, by running away when off the lead, or simply stolen. It makes sense then to have the animal chipped, so you can get it back quickly if it is picked up. They have genuinely been lost.
A cat however either lives indoors all the time or is allowed to roam. A cat permanently confined does not need a chip as it is less likely to escape. For the roamers, a responsible owner will already have it with a collar and tag so the chip is superfluous. Many cats go out and do a Captain Oates, either by accident or design, so how does the chip help other than in identifying the carcass?
I loved this phrase in the release:
It is estimated that over a quarter of the UK’s pet cats aren’t microchipped, meaning that
up to 2.6 million cats will benefit from the new measures.
So we already have three-quarters chipped, for the reasons I have stated. Which begs the question - if the "owners" could not be arsed to chip the remainder (and this assumes they were not strays in the first place), then how are they going to "benefit"?
And of course, I presume there are far more cats running around out there that are of domestic breeds but are really strays because cat owners may be less likely to neuter than a dog owner - but that is just speculation on my part.