UK cat owners face a potential fine of £500 but there are exemptions

Cat owners in the UK are facing a potential fine of £500 if they fail to microchip their cat by 10th June of this year. They will have 21 days to microchip their cat after that date if they haven’t done so but if they continue to not microchip their cat, they will be subject to this fine. Incidentally you can buy microchip scanners on Amazon and check at home. In a survey UK citizens said they want the legislation but I don’t think they thought about enforcement.

Voluntary compliance?

These are big words and big objectives but the truth of the matter is that it is not going to happen. I can foresee many hundreds of thousands of cat owners not complying with this law. The kind of inveterately careless cat owner who does not do a great job and who does not read newspapers and will not understand the obligation placed on them under this new legislation (The Microchipping of Cats and Dogs (England) Regulations 2023).

“Microchipping is by far the most effective and quickest way of identifying lost pets. As we’ve seen with dog microchipping, those who are microchipped are more than twice as likely to be reunited with their owner.

Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss
Microchipping a cat is the law on 10th June 2024 in UK
Microchipping a cat is the law on 10th June 2024 in UK. Image: MikB

Enforcement?

The point I’m getting at is that who is going to enforce this law? The only people who can enforce it will be veterinarians and are they prepared to do it? Or perhaps nosey, spying neighbours. And in any case a lot of cat owners don’t take their cat to the vet for many years or sometimes never. These people who have not microchipped their cat will get away with it without facing a fine.

RELATED: Is cat microchipping mandatory in Australia?

Exemptions

There are exemptions which I think are worthwhile briefly discussing.

The legislation is meant to help reunite lost and stray cats with their owners provided the information on the microchip is up to date which I suspect, on a number of occasions, is not the case.

The government’s website does not tell us as such but the news media tell me that cats with little or no human interactional dependency such as community cats and feral cats will not be subject of this legislation. To be clear, feral, stray and community cats need not be micro-chipped. These are cats that are unowned.

Weakens legislation

That, I would suggest, presents a weakness to this legislation. Let’s look at a scenario.

An official tells a cat owner that their cat is not microchipped. She responds by saying that the cat concerned is a stray cat. Or that she is looking after the cat temporarily. The picture becomes muddy. In any case, nobody will receive a knock on the door from an official about micro-chipping their cat. I’m back to the problem with enforcement.

Unenforceable?

I cannot see how this law can be enforced. It won’t be enforced actually. What’ll happen is that those people who know about the legislation will comply with it voluntarily while those people who don’t care about this kind of legislation or don’t keep up to scratch with new rules will not microchip their cat and they will probably get away with it.

Large number of unmicrochipped cats

Cats Protection in their research found that 2.3 million cats in England are currently not microchipped. That’s a big number. Regrettably, I have quite a negative viewpoint about this legislation which is good and genuine with good intentions but will there be compliance?

Hardcore

You will always have a hard core of people who don’t comply and don’t do a good job of cat caregiving. They don’t sterilise their cats. They create unwanted cats. They don’t microchip their cats. They don’t take their cats to the veterinarian. They don’t care. They are rule breakers. I won’t go on.

RELATED: Does a pet microchip prove legal ownership?

Legal ownership

Surprisingly, I suspect to some, a microchipped cat with information in the microchip which says that Mrs X owns the cat is not a hundred percent solid evidence that she continues to own the cat. It would be an added piece of evidence but it is not conclusive evidence. There is quite a good argument that nobody actually owns a domestic cat because they are free to travel around their neighbourhood and choose a different “owner” if they wish. A cat is not like an inanimate object in this respect. The concept of ownership is blurred in the human-to-cat relationship.

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