SAFE Bunbury call for pet sterilisation

SAFE Bunbury president Mark Townsend said the state-wide animal rescue service was continuing to rescue far too many pregnant cats and dogs in Bunbury.

“People need to consider the knock-on effect when they don’t get their pets sterilised,” he said.

“Some people think oh, it’s not fair to deny her one litter of kittens, but the kittens have to go somewhere and often they end up in the wild and go feral.

“Then that cat has even more kittens and the results can be devastating, every cat can have between three to 10 kittens so pretty soon there’s an overpopulation.”

Ms Townsend said the mission was to help Australia avoid becoming like some other countries which have a dog and cat population problem.

“Bali, Spain, Italy, all these places you can’t even sit down at a cafe without 20 cats and dogs surrounding you.”

Mr Townsend said overpopulation also had a horrific affect on the animals themselves.

“With overpopulation disease like feline AIDS is a massive problem, it spreads and causes more issues,” he said.

“Feral animals also attack and kill the native wildlife, lizards, birds even snakes are targets.

The goal for Mr Townsend and SAFE Bunbury is to avoid the euthanasia of healthy animals but the current situation was making the job increasingly difficult.

“We haven’t had to put an animal down we couldn’t adopt out, but it’s a scenario we want to avoid,” he said

SAFE is also dealing with a lack of volunteers. 

“We operate entirely through volunteers and we need more foster carers, people who can take care of these animals for a period until they’re adopted out.”

SAFE wear the cost of taking care of the animal, with foster carers only needing to worry about providing a loving environment.

Anyone interested should email safebunburycats@live.com or contact 0435 041 099.