MOORPARK : City Will Require Licenses for Cats

Moorpark will become the first city in Ventura County to require cat owners to license their pets in the same way as dogs.

“By licensing cats, we will destroy far fewer cats,” Councilman Scott Montgomery said Friday. “Secondly, it’s only fair that cat owners--who constitute 50% of all animal-control expense--bear a fair share of those costs.”

The City Council on Wednesday voted 4 to 0 in favor of the new law, which will require cat owners to pay $7.50 a year to license spayed and neutered cats and $25 for unaltered animals. The prices, which are the same for dogs, will rise next year to $8.50 and $27.50, respectively, as part of a countywide fee increase.

The city now uses revenue from dog licenses to offset the cost of its contract with Ventura County to provide animal control in Moorpark. But Montgomery said that the city still winds up paying about $64,000 each year toward the contract and that the estimated $12,000 first-year revenue from cat licenses will reduce the city expense.

County Animal Regulation Director Kathy Jenks said Friday that she hoped that other cities follow Moorpark’s lead in requiring cat licenses.

“We kill too many cats, and the reason we kill them is that we don’t know who they belong to and the owners don’t know where to look for them or they don’t look early enough,” Jenks said. “By requiring the licensing of cats, they’re finally saying that cats have a value and that the owners of cats have a responsibility to them.”

Jenks said her department--which provides animal-control services countywide with the exception of Thousand Oaks--handled 7,458 dogs and 7,082 cats in fiscal year 1992-93. Of those, 3,665 dogs and 5,356 cats were destroyed. Owners reclaimed 1,764 dogs and just 126 cats.

Forcing cats to be licensed, Jenks said, should narrow the gap between the number of dogs and cats that are reclaimed.