Nuisance cats

We encourage cat owners to keep their cat on their property, particularly between dusk and dawn. About 80% of accidents with cats occur at night. This is also when they are most likely to hunt native wildlife.

What to do

If a neighbourhood cat is regularly coming on to your property and being a nuisance, we recommend the following to resolve the situation:

1. If you know who owns the cat, speak to the owner
2. If you aren’t able to speak to the owner or don’t feel comfortable approaching them directly, you can write to them using our 'Sample note' below
3. If you can't resolve the situation with the owner, organise one of our cat traps (we’ll collect the trapped cat)
4. If the problem continues and you agree to provide your address, we can issue the owner with a Notice of Objection to the presence of their cat on private property
5. If it happens again, we can issue an infringement notice to the owner.

Stray and semi-owned cats

Stray and semi-owned cats have a serious impact on local wildlife. In some cases they have caused the extinction of native ground-dwelling birds and small to medium-sized mammals.

The stray cat population is growing, helped by people feeding unowned cats. Feeding stray cats but not taking ownership or responsibility for them (including desexing) increases the problem.

Our Animal Management Officers can set traps to collect stray cats. This helps to control breeding numbers and to protect local native animals.

You can support stray cats by taking ownership and arranging for them to be desexed, or by contacting us to have the cat taken to the RSPCA.

Organise a cat trap

Cat traps can be delivered from our Camberwell offices for up to 2 weeks of use.

Our traps work by attracting the cat into the trap with food at the other end of the trap. The cat walks into the trap willingly. Once the cat is inside the trap, it will activate the latch to close.

If you need a cat trap, call us on (03) 9278 4444 or email us at [email protected], and we will arrange a time to deliver the trap and show you how it works. There is no cost for organising a cat trap.

Traps should only be set overnight, Sunday through Thursday, and checked each morning. If there is not a cat in the trap in the morning, the trap should be closed until the next night.

Collecting the cat trap

When the cat is in the closed trap, call us on (03) 9278 4444 to request an Animal Management Officer to collect the cat.

We will arrange a time to come collect the cat during business hours. You do not need to be at home when the cat trap is collected, as long you tell us where the trap is and make sure that we can access the trap.

It is not an issue for the cat to be in the trap overnight. We try to respond to requests to collect cats in traps as soon as we are available. In summer, please ensure the trap is in a shady place and that there is fresh water in the trap, and in winter make sure that the trap is under shelter.

Collected cats will be taken to the RSPCA.