Know Where Your Cat Is Tonight? : Going the high-tech and the low-tech routes to keep track of Cuddles

Cat overpopulation causes a serious public health problem. Strays and abandoned cats reproduce uncontrollably, and household pets that are allowed to go outside contribute to the problem. Mandatory neutering remains the most obvious solution. However, most cat-licensing laws, intended to curb breeding and to facilitate the identification of lost animals, lack teeth.

Although low-tech means of identification have long been available, one Bay Area community is now embracing a Space Age approach. Novato, a city in Marin County near San Francisco, has approved an identification law that relies on microchips. To help reunite owners with their lost cats, the City Council approved an ordinance requiring cat owners to have an identifying microchip placed under the skin between the shoulder blades of their cats. The encoded pellet, the size of a rice grain, is read by a scanner. It works, costs only $5 and lasts a lifetime.

The Novato law also requires owners to sterilize any cat, four months or older, that spends any time outdoors. The ordinance, sponsored by the Marin County Humane Society, makes sense. It could substantially reduce the present need to euthanize thousands of cats annually.

Assemblyman Paul Horcher (I-Diamond Bar) introduced similar legislation two years ago in Sacramento. AB 302 called for the issuing of citations to owners who failed to neuter outside cats over the age of 4 months. That bill died. So did 400,000 cats destroyed last year in California shelters. Many of these animals had been deliberately abandoned, but some were lost pets whose owners could not be found.

In Southern California, an owner can have his or her cat’s ear pierced with an identification tag. The Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Southern California Humane Society offer ear tags for $12. That’s a small price to pay to save a cat.