The Telegraph reports on information from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home on what is described as a “kitten boom”. It’s disturbing but the Covid-19 pandemic really did mess up the UK in a number of ways including pet ownership.
Before Covid-19 there were an estimated 7.5 million cats and 9 million dogs in the UK. After the pandemic (2 years later) the new estimate is: 12 million cats and 13 million dogs. An extraordinary increase all thanks to Covid and impulse adoptions with adopters taking a short-term view.
There appears to be two reasons for a kitten boom: firstly, many cat owners are failing to neuter and spay their cats. Secondly, it appears that there is a surplus of kittens in the system because of the rampant breeding of cats during Covid to keep pace with demand. Suddenly that demand faded away because of the end of lockdowns, leaving the surplus.
Battersea state that 133 kittens were born across the charity’s three London centres in a single year (2022) compared with 82 in the previous nine years.
Cats Protection revealed that 37% of litters born in the past 12 months were the result of accidental breeding.
Dr. Maggie Roberts, Cats Protection’s Director of Feline Welfare said that the large number of unwanted kittens is due to the pandemic as stated.
“Unwanted litters are the biggest reason why kittens are relinquished to Cats Protection.”
They say that there has been a 23% increase in unwanted litters brought to their charity from October 1 through to December 2022 compared to normal.
To the above we have to add the current costs of living crisis. This is due to inflation post-Covid which was predictable and which has in part been caused by the UK government printing billions of pounds of money (euphemistically called ‘quantitative easing’).
Because money is tight in some households, it appears that some cat owners have decided not to spay and neuter their cats to save the male neutering cost of £76 and the female spaying cost of £105.
But in penny-pinching on these relatively small sums of money, they are exposing themselves to far higher costs in dealing with unwanted litters of kittens.
Demographically speaking, it appears that the age bracket 25-34 makes up the highest proportion of new cat owners with 31% acquiring a new cat over the past 12 months. Just 4% of people aged 65 and older adopted or purchased a cat in the past year.
And also, demographically speaking, cat owners in the 18-34 age bracket are less likely to sterilise their cat with a miserly 76% having the operation done. By comparison, 86% of cat owners aged between 35-54 took their cat to a vet for sterilisation. And for people aged 55 and over, the percentage was 96.
One reason why there is a dramatic increase in the number of cats in the UK is because there are many more multi-cat homes apparently. That’s according to Cats Protection.
Below are some more articles on Covid which is still with us and affecting our lives quite strongly.
