Zurich-based group Zürcher Tierschutz launched a campaign earlier this year to set a quota for the country’s cats, deeming them a threat to other wildlife, including small mammals, reptiles and birds.
However, since the campaign began, cat lovers have been pawsitively up in arms about it.
The group estimates there to be 1.4 million cats in the country — far fewer than Rome’s 2,000 cats per square kilometer, or Japan’s Tashirojima “cat heaven” island where there are 2,350 cats and just 100 humans.
The one-cat policy proposed followed an earlier proposal of castration to control the population, though the measures would be “applied on a voluntary basis,” explained Claudia Kistler, co-author of a study on cats for Zürcher Tierschutz.
In July, animal rights group in Saint-Gall, in the east of the country, purrpoposed a “cat curfew” between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. as it’s “during these hours that they attack the most victims,” according to Le Monde.
Read more from Switzerland’s The Local here.
Photo: Juanedc
