Pet controls

Sometime in July the Cape Girardeau City Council is expected to approve a new ordinance regulating pets. This will be an update on an ordinance passed nearly a year ago.

There are few topics that can stir up a town more than pet laws. Victims of destruction by pets or howling animals in the night welcome any relief city regulations can provide. Many pet owners tend to resist limits on the number of pets a household can have.

The new pet regulations are based on the recommendations of a task force that has studied Cape Girardeau's pet rules for quite some time. The suggestions from the task force appear to be based on taking as reasonable approach as possible while still maintaining some order regarding pet animals.

New limits on dogs, cats

Four dogs or eight cats. Those are the household limits for the most common pets in Cape Girardeau. Some will see the new limits as too restrictive. Others will wish the controls were tighter.

Part of the reason for having a pet ordinance is to relieve the citizenry from as much of the nuisance factor as possible. The new ordinance includes provisions for citing the owners of dogs that bark during the night.

Much of the ordinance, however, is based on the premise that there are too many irresponsible animal owners who let their animals add to the overpopulation of unwanted pets. The ordinance addresses indiscriminate breeding of pets in a variety of ways, including setting the licensing fee for animals that haven't been spayed or neutered at five times those that have been.

Daunting numbers

Even so, the cost is low. Licenses for altered pets are $3 a year, and $15 a year for unaltered animals.

But statistics from the Humane Society of Southeast Missouri's animal shelter indicate attempts to control unwanted pets isn't working very well. The shelter processes about 5,300 animals a year, mostly dogs and cats. Although there are no exact records, the humane society estimates most of those animals were never licensed. And the police department says there are only about 1,200 licensed pets in the city -- probably far less than half of the city's entire pet population.

The numbers are staggering, particularly on the humane society's end of the pet cycle. Unless animal owners take responsibility for the excess of unwanted pets, the situation isn't going to get much better. The city's new ordinance is one way to encourage more pet owners to make sure the unwanted litters of puppies and kittens is reduced.