You got a license for that cat, Mister?

” Soszynski said “break-away” collars are available that come off in such situations.”
So…
When the critter needs to be identified, the collar’s hanging on a fence.
Brilliant!

I attempted to put one of the “break-aways” on my old cat. He did not cotton to it and promptly hooked it with a hind leg and popped it off. Then he gave me a nasty look.

They don’t care about catching a cat w/out a tag around its neck. All they want is for people to pay the fees to license their cat. Weather or not there is visual evidence of an actual tag is meaningless.
Animal Control needs funding and this is a ne revenue stream.
I think micro-chips are the best ay of getting bck a pet.

This is why I buy all my cats at the farmers market in Campbell.

Cats are cute.

Unlike dog collars, cat collars break off. Every cat owner knows this. This is law that can’t work. A better law would be for cats to be vaccinated and implanted with a scan-able chip. My cat is.

Mtn View is run just like any for-profit enterprise, and any new source of potential revenue must be exploited.
It’s a simple formula: We citizens represent revenue, and are therefore exploited.

My cats are strictly indoor and I am adamantly opposed to rabies shots – do some research to discover how toxic they are to cats. Microchip, yes; collars, NO!

Will the licensing stop my neighbor’s numerous cats from coming into my yard where my kids play? I’m talking about cat poop here. That’s a problem I’d like to solve.

Can we get a waiver on making the cats wear a collar if they are chipped? Who will be enforcing the new rules? Do the police really have that much free time on their hands what with all the pedestrians running into cars these days?

BTW, saw a pedestrian (engrossed in her digital device) meandering up the Shoreline overpass in the bike lane this morning during rush hour, hardly paying attention to traffic. Why is it that in this technologically-savvy city some people are such prime Darwin candidates?

at least this does something. Gives more money to the city and shelter.

Unlike the stupid plastic bag rule, where now I (and other’s i’m guessing) have to buy plastic bags instead of just getting them from the store.

So now the made from recycled bags that I used to use for trash are replaced by not-recycled bags I had to buy–which come in a box made from trees.

My first vet recommended against the rabies vaccine as they cause really bad cancers in cats. Now my cat is 14 and my current vet at Adobe also recommended against both the feline leukemiea and rabies vaccines so as not to compromise her immune system. She’s mainly an indoor cat and only goes outside in the backyard anyway—for this she needs a license!

Wow. I didn’t think it was possible to see my ‘respect’ for the city council fall any lower. Keep digging that hole.

Admitting there is no problem being solved and passing a law to impose a “fee” on a large number of people is just plain crazy. This won’t solve the larger stray-cat problem. This won’t slow down traffic on congested streets. This won’t reduce the number of break-in robberies in our city. This won’t add parks or stores around the massive city-approved condo complexes.

Three are _real_ problems that our council needs to address. _Real_ issues with completely plausible solutions. Cat licensing is idiocracy at its best.

I call BS. This is not even a thinly-veiled attempt by the nannies to find another way to make a buck. Sure it could help a small handful of people but at the expense and inconvenience of the many.

And you know it won’t stop there. They’ll start imposing limits because of one extreme case even though there are already laws on the books to cover that case.

If you’re a 2A supporter, this all sounds very familiar. At the very least, they’re consistent.

Like many people in MV, I live in a condo. On the second floor. My cat can’t get out. Yet, he is chipped just in case. If the licenses were tied in a database to the registered chip numbers, and police, fire &/or animal control personnel were provided with scanners and had access to this database of local chips and could return a lost animal directly TO THE OWNER rather than the shelter that’s 10 miles away in a different city, then there is a remote chance that this is a good idea.

But since it has not worked for dogs (chipped dogs are transfered to the shelter without anyone even checking for a chip) then having a license is POINTLESS, especially for an indoor only cat.

Licensing cats is another scam to extort money from the residents of Mountain View. And bees? Really? OMG! Where will it stop? I am speechless.

I am surprised to hear that animal shelters don’t scan for chips. Why wouldn’t they? How hard can it be? It would save the shelters tons of money. It should be a requirement. Vote on that City Council! There’s your extra money.

is the vaccine business down in the city?

WHAT?

My cat is smarter than these people….

Good luck running after the roaming cats! Then what next – licensing squirrels and applying the stray-hold hours? It is reasonable for the owner of the squirrels to be the city. I hope the city will have better ideas to bring on the table – for example, modernizing the colors of the village…. Oh, what a brown color… Oh no, that’s not important. How about discussing and finding solutions to the ridiculous rent increases in Mountain View?

Cats sleep for at least 20 hours, so it is the less than four hours that the city is bothered with. So what next – Leashing cats? Then for the city to build a cat park.

I’ve officially had it with the Mountain View City Council. Enough is enough! I’m ready to run for city council just to undo everything they have put into effect. Enough government intrusion into our lives!

I lost a cat due to vaccine-associated cancer. A routine rabies vaccine became bone cancer on her shoulder. She lived only 6 months after diagnosis and dropped from 11 pounds to 5.

I’m not so sure I want to vaccinate my new cat, a former stray, against a disease that’s only been seen once in Northern California since the 1990’s.

I have a better idea. Let’s round up the political tax parasites that run this godforsaken excuse of a town, and put them in shelters. If no one claims them after three days, we get to put them to sleep.

Okay, I’m totally not cool with government getting up in my business if I have an indoor cat…

But bringing up this whole anti-vaccination nonsense? Really?

And while we’re at it, where is the revenue going that will be generated from the licensing?

I cannot find any financial statements on SVACA’s website. What is Dan’s compensation package?

Seigel had it right, there is no real reason for this. The only stated benefit is reuniting cats with owners. Responsible law-abiding owners are already getting the micro-chips installed, and the other kind of owners won’t bother with the licensing anyway, so we’re left with punishing the responsible people. Yuck.

Regarding the vaccination, the *only* reason the government should be telling anyone what vaccine they *must* use is a demonstrable clear and present public health risk. There does not seem to be evidence of that in this case.

This is a waste of resources, is basically unenforceable wouldn’t guarantee that a lost cat would be returned to its owner, and has bad consequences. Requiring all cats, including those that are indoor only, to be inoculated with chemicals that can be deadly is unwise. Will the City reimburse the cat owner for the cost of vet care needed and for pain and suffering of both the cat and its owner if the cat develops an untreatable tumor? Probably not. It also makes it difficult for cats to be adopted or kept by people with low or fixed incomes. The reduced adoption rate and increase in abandoned and relinquished cats would put increased pressure on already overcrowded shelters so more would end up being killed. This is not acceptable! Requiring a registered microchip and that the shelters scan for one makes more sense. Also, the City needs to specify how the money will be used.

In my previous comment, I forgot to suggest that mandatory neuter/spay would be a good idea for all cats, including those that are indoor only since they can get out. That and finding and fining people who are backyard breeders would help reduce the homeless cat situation.

If the City is looking for new sources of revenue, requiring a biking safety class and bike license for bikers 18 and over is something that should be given serious consideration. It would also be enforceable.

The City Council should have bigger fish to fry then licensing cats. Both of ours are micro chipped which is a far better way to ID a lost animal. This is just a ploy to bring $$ into city coffers IMO. Dogs will run away, bark incessantly and some can be dangerous. Cats stick close to home and pose no risk to the citizens of Mountain View. Truly ridiculous, good luck catching our wily semi-outdoor cat.

What’s troubling about the entire process with elected officials (city council, school boards, Congress?) is that they seem to do so little fact-finding about the very issues they are voting on. Repeatedly I’ve seen school board and council members blindly go along with whatever “staff” recommends, and this is yet one more example of that. I mean, look at all the info about rabies, cancer in cats, etc that is offered up here! Were all those factors seriously considered before the vote? I do know for a fact that many council members never personally visited the animal shelters before they voted to pull out of Palo Alto Animal Services and go with the current one. Just take staff’s word on it! The same staff that gets cushy post-retirement pensions?

I’m confused. I went to the shelter’s (SVACA) website, and it sure looks as if licensing is already required of Mountain View residents:
http://svaca.com/services/animal_licensing.html

It says “Licensing is mandated by State and City law. State laws and local ordinances mandate that all dogs and cats over four months of age must be vaccinated for rabies and licensed. Licenses are not transferable from one owner to the next. ”

This is NOT true — Mountain View has no ordinance requiring licensing of cats or that cats receive rabies vaccinations:
see http://library.municode.com/index.aspx?clientId=16508
(go to Chapter 5)

Which leads me to ask: What the heck is going on?
Are the people at SVACA accountable for their actions?

I hearby propose to all other cats in mt view to march
our little paws down to the city council and meow the hell out of their meeting, then lets go down castro street peeing and pooping all over the the humans sidewalks.

Kinda reminds me of when they decided to ban white plastic chairs.

My cat is microchipped, neutered and has had his shots. Even if I get a license for him he would not keep it on long due to his breakaway collar.

Just out of curiosity… How bout all the ferrel cats? And the raccoons?

The ironic thing is is that we will pay to license our animals, but then when an animal gets run over by a car they won’t pick up the dead carcass. A dead cat lay in the middle of Middlefield Rd for over a week until some neighbor put its carcass in the dumpster. This is absolutely absurd.

Licensing and laws do nothing to curb the problem of these invasive species vermin. If cats are required to be licensed then cat-lovers just stop putting collars on their cats, as they did by me. And they won’t even bother getting them micro-chipped, especially not that They want absolutely nothing that can hold them legally responsible, liable, and accountable for the actions of their cats. It’s why many of them even keep cats in the first place. We’re not talking about the topmost responsible citizens of the world, you know. They don’t want that responsibility of what their cat has done coming back on them. If they had even one iota of a sense of responsibility and respect for all other lives on this planet we wouldn’t even be having these discussions.

On the other hand, I found something that DOES work, and works well, and works fast (well, relative to the years it takes trying to reason with deceitful and lying cat-lovers that accomplishes ABSOLUTELY NOTHING). Where I live cat-lovers have learned that _ALL_ cats, stray and feral, collared or not, ear-tipped or not (because TNR con-artist liars now just clip cats’ ears only, WITHOUT sterilizing or vaccinating them, to protect their hoarded cats from being trapped and euthanized), _ALL_ their cats are humanely shot on sight and buried whenever found away from supervised confinement.

The ONLY thing that works is destroying any of their cats found outdoors off their property. They either learn to stop getting more cats that die under the wheels of cars or from animal attacks, or they finally learn how to be a responsible pet owner, respectful neighbor, and learn to keep their invasive species animal under confined supervision, as it should be. Win win win all around. You can either destroy their cat for them humanely, or let their lack of concern for their cat cause it to die inhumanely. By destroying their cat for them humanely you are showing them that you care more about their cat than even they do. A bullet is by far the most humane death that any free-roaming cat will ever meet. Anything else is all inhumanely downhill from there. Their only other options are being hit by cars, environmental poisons, cat & animal attacks, disease and parasites, freezing, etc., etc.

You can’t train a cat to stay home but I found that, in time, you CAN train a cat-owner into being a responsible pet-owner and a respectable neighbor. Most of them are so phenomenally stupid, disrespectful, and criminally irresponsible though that you have to make at least 12-15 of their cats permanently disappear before they even start to figure out what they’ve been doing wrong all during their sorry, useless, and pathetic lives.

If you live in an area where its not legal to use firearms to destroy any animal that is threatening the health and safety of you, your family, your animals, or property (as it *IS* legal in most every area of the nation — shoot to maim is animal cruelty but shoot to kill is a perfectly legal way to humanely destroy any nuisance animal on your own property); then check into laws regarding air-rifles with ballistics speeds of 700-1200 fps and using pointed vermin-pellets in no-firearms zones. Many of the newer ones even come with their own sound-suppressor designs built-in, being specifically designed for shooting vermin cats in urban areas, the demand is that great. Failing that, then there’s always the SSS and TDSS Cat Management Programs that are exploding in popularity worldwide. Shoot, Shovel, & Shut-Up; or Trap, Drown, Shovel, & Shut-Up. Both methods are legal on every square foot of this earth. No local laws were violated if it never happened! (Where cats have already learned to evade all trapping methods, then inexpensive generic 1-adult-strength acetaminophen (overseas a.k.a. paracetamol) pain-relievers are a more species specific vermin poison. But you really need to retrieve and dispose of that carcass safely so that native wildlife won’t die from the many diseases cats spread even after their death.)

Good luck!

I also found a perfectly 100% natural solution for those who don’t want to take more direct and more effective measures against free-roaming invasive species cats. Anyone who has criminally irresponsible cat-lickers in their area need only plant lilies on their properties. (Must be from the Lilium species, not just with “Lily” in the common name, see notes.) Cat-lickers always want their more responsible neighbors to grow plants around the perimeter of their properties that will repel their cats for them (from the cat-owners’ own criminally negligent and criminally irresponsible behaviors and values). Well now you can brighten up your yard AND repel cats naturally! — PERMANENTLY

(WARNING: If these plants are not native to your region don’t plant these if they cannot be contained, or risk introducing yet another invasive species!)

Google for: lily toxicity cats

It has been reported that a cat even licking a little bit of Lily pollen from their fur will be fatal in short order. A cat even drinking some of the water in which a bunch of lilies has been kept is also fatal to them.

Everyone happy! You get to have the kinds of plants that you want, they get to have the kind of pets that they want — if they take care of it like any responsible grown-up would. Or are cat-lickers now going to demand that you can’t plant flowers on your own property? That would be their next and usual move, wouldn’t it.

A perfectly natural solution to an invasive species animal that didn’t evolve with Lilium species around. Plus it’s a good incentive plan for cat-lickers to finally educate themselves all about ecology, native species, and evolution. 🙂

Doing a little research on ASPCA’s toxic plants lists (Family: Liliaceae).

Lilies (Lilium species) that are deadly toxic to cats ONLY, in even small quantities (even the pollen will do):

Common Name | Scientific Name

Asian Lily (Asiatic Lily) | Lilium asiatica

Easter Lily | Lilium longiflorum

Red Lily | Lilium umbellatum

Rubrum Lily ** | Lilium speciosum cultivar

Stargazer Lily ** | Lilium orientalis

Tiger Lily ** | Lilium tigrinum

Wood Lily | Lilium umbellatum

(not of the Lilium species)

Orange Day Lily | Hemerocallis graminea

( ** see notes below)

Lilies (Lilium species) that may be toxic to dogs if the dog ingests enough:

NONE!

Be sure they are from the Liliacea Family, has “Lilium” on the plant label or are common N. American Day Lilies. Many plants with “Lily” in the common-name are not of the “Lilium” species, and are in fact toxic to other species of animals besides cats. Double check. On further investigation I also found out that all plant-parts, the blossoms and pollen being the most toxic, if harvested and dried (for year-round use) are just as deadly toxic to cats (if not more-so because of the unknown toxin being concentrated), and the drying makes them even more palatable to cats. What a great mulch for gardens! (Or a ground-up additive for a special outdoor can of tuna.)

** There have been some anecdotal reports of some free-roaming cats that have spent many years around some of these particular species of plants and still survived. So it is best to harvest, dry, and grind-up the plants and mix them into any appropriate bait-foods to be most effective.

Ummmm… How did a conversation about cat taxes/lisense deteriorate into How to kill you neighbors cat in a few easy steps?

As an original land owner of Mtn View (25ac west of Calderon Ave from 1920s-1960s), this is the last straw! Me and my 4 cats are moving out of town!

“Even if I get a license for him he would not keep it on long”

The requirement is to *buy* a license. Not make your cat wear it.

Jeebus! (that’s my indoor/outdoor cat talking…)

A chip is the better solution. Indoor or out it never falls off.

Scanners are not that expensive anymore, even for low margin shelters.
Any revenues derived by a licensing measure could be used to help defray the purchase of any scanners the city’s animal control services contractor incurs.

O

Opposed. Some cats cannot keep collars on. Rabies is not a problem in Mountain View. If we start treating cats and dogs equally, we’ll have to build cat parks. If the City Council is looking for problems to solve, start working on the raccoon population.

So I’m assuming that Cat Houses will be licensed!!!

NFW will I be vaccinating my cats which have immune mediated conditions, as per my vets recommendation. They are indoor cats for a reason. My cats are neutered and chipped, you will have to sue me to get me to pay a licensing fee to the city. Go for it.

Completely ridiculous revenue generating scheme.

All of these cat owners are crying for no reason. They say that they have indoor cats that do not need rabies vaccine because they are never outside. Fine. The only time you will get this law enforced is if you prove to be a liar and let your cat outside to be picked up. When you go to claim it you might get a fine. But since you never let your cat out, this will never happen, right?

Also these cat people are liars. They say they microchip their pet but then that they don’t need collars or vaccines since they never let their cat out. Why microchip then?

Explain please. Cat got your tongue?

I have a 20 ft boat, they charge me an annual “luxury” tax. PLUS a registration fee for the boat and a separate fee for the trailer. It sits in my drive way. WTF is a “luxury” tax and how did they justify that? “Oh you own something nice? That’s going to cost you.” That takes a lot of huevos AND they get away with it.

@dontlicenseyourcatsthen,

Actually I don’t believe rabies in cats IS a problem, and that’s the rub. to quote councilman Jac Siegel, who is also now the chair of SVACA’s board. “There hasn’t been a rabies outbreak or situation in Santa Clara County caused by a dog or cat. I’m not sure what problem we are trying to solve.” BINGO.

If my cat winds up requiring city services, I will pay at the time of service…you know, kind of like how I paid the shelter when I adopted my cats, and how I pay the pet food store when I purchase my pet food and how I pay the vet, after the vet has treated my cat…all fees paid at the time of service.

Again, a cat license fee is a completely unwarranted revenue generating scheme for the city.

BTW, just because my cats were rescue cats does not mean they were feral cats. You might want to do a little homework about the various reasons cats (and animals in general) wind up in a rescue shelter.

@dontlicenseyourcatsthen

“great! i think they should charge you $1000 to get your cat back, since that is what it will cost if none of the cat owners share the cost before needing it.”

Deal.

Next.

@dontlicenseyourcatsthen,

It was your proposal. I didn’t say whether or not I could afford it, just that I was okay with the way the fee for service set up.

Good job!

Thought this city was corrupt and now they’re proving it. They’re not sure why they wanted to license cats in the 1st place. Lets try to divert our city to priorities of public safety , hmmmm. How about crosswalk alert lights!!! We have about 20+ that need them. Apparently our city doesn’t have the funds, maybe we should petition Google for these!

@ dontlicenseyourcatsthen,

You said: “you clearly do not understand how community services are financed.”

You have no idea how incorrect that statement is. It’s laughably inaccurate. Again, good job!