Cat exclusion zone?

BRITAIN COULD get its first ever ‘cat exclusion zone’ in a bid to protect endangered birds.
Under the plans to safeguard vulnerable nests, families buying homes in a 300 square mile swathe of the Home Counties would be forced to sign an agreement never to own a cat.


Imposing such a ban is the only way developers would be allowed to build 50,000 much needed homes near the birds’ nesting grounds in the heaths of Surrey, Berkshire and Hampshire.
The tracts of lowland area, collectively known as the Thames Basin Heaths, were declared a single ‘special protection area’ under an EU directive introduced last year.

The move - designed to protect the Dartford warbler, the nightjar and the woodlark - brought building plans to a halt, despite Government pledges for new housing in the area.

Following crisis talks between builders and Ministers, several solutions were mooted - including the covenant forcing homeowners to promise never to keep cats, or even dogs.

However, the idea, which was suggested by developers, has been criticised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

A spokeswoman said: “There is no evidence that a ban on keeping cats and dogs will remove the threat to the rare birds on the heaths.” She said similar bans in high-rise flats were often ignored.

An alternative proposal from wildlife watchdogs Natural England, formerly English Nature, would prohibit development within 440 yards of the nesting grounds - a distance deemed to be the ‘roaming range’ of cats.

But other experts dispute the figure, saying cats can roam as far as two-thirds of a mile from home.

The RSPB, with more than a million members, has given cautious backing to the idea but fears cats may still reach the nests on or near the ground. Cats are alleged to kill about 55 million birds in the UK every year, although so-called official; research on the subject has never proven this conclusively.

Natural England responded to the EU ruling by imposing strict conditions on any development - even a single home - within three miles of the heaths, including the provision of alternative open spaces for people to walk dogs to prevent them damaging heathland.

Developers say the restrictions make it almost impossible to meet housing demand in such sought-after locations as Surrey Heath, Guildford and Woking, where average house prices have been driven up to £350,000. And they say they have had to lay off workers because of the delays.

Any plans to try to prevent people from owning cats or dogs, especially in privately-owned dwellings, would surely see hundreds or even thousands of legal challenges lodged against the Government under the Human Rights Act.

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Kitty Power - a woman’s best friend

THE DOG may be known as ‘Man’s Best Friend’, but the Cat is fast gaining a reputation as ‘Woman’s Best Friend’ – and it seems that cat food manufacturers are quite happy to spend millions of pounds to develop advertising for their target audience; woman who own cats.

For over ten years now, cats have outranked dogs as the UK’s most popular pet, and now outnumber dogs by a million and a half. Not only do an estimated 4.7 million women in the UK own cats - almost four times the number of men - but developments in the £7m-a-year cat-food market suggest an ever-increasing proportion are drawn from the more upwardly mobile sections of society.

This month, the makers of Sheba announced they had hired a Hollywood director to film a new advertising campaign aimed at attracting, ‘stylish’ and ‘independent’ women to their product. The £1m, three-part commercial based on Alice in Wonderland, will be directed by Martha Fiennes, sister of the famous actor Ralph. It stars the ballerina Monica Zamora, together with two sought-after models: Eva Imsa and Meritxell.

For an n animal that has suffered in the past from its association with spinsterhood, the TV advertisement, which stars a British Blue Shorthair cat, marks the latest in a remarkable series of PR triumphs. Not only has the advertising industry begun to re-invent their image - the Bacardi Breezer adverts starred a Silver Tabby cat for example - but several leading style-icons, including the artist Tracey Emin have used them in recent work.

According to experts, this reversal of fortunes is in part due to low-maintenance ownership, which lends itself to the lifestyle of upwardly mobile career women. Men, who tend to want unconditional loyalty in their pets, still prefer a dog. ‘There used to be this stereotype of the post-menopausal spinster of this parish, who would live with 15 cats and was ever so slightly mad,’ says the cat behaviour counsellor, Vicky Halls. ‘But it’s just not so any more, in my professional experience.

‘Nowadays, you get a lot of stylish, successful and independent women whose Achilles heel is their cat. They can be strong and self-assured and in control, and then a cat comes into their life and they suddenly become all gooey.’

‘If you’re working long hours, it’s not practical to have a dog, unless it’s one you can carry in your handbag. Cats have a wonderful adaptability. They can be completely independent, but then capable of exhibiting great love on tap.’

To some observers - many of them male - cats offer childless single women a low-rent alternative to a baby. But Ms Halls, the author of Cat Counsellor, believes the relationship between a woman and her cat cannot be explained away so easily.


‘There’s a bit of the mother/child relationship there, but its too simplistic to put the entire thing down to that: if women want a baby then in this day and age they can jolly well go out and have one.’


‘Actually, cats have a rakish attitude, and sometimes it seems that they’re not a child substitute, but a male relationship replacement. They have the appeal of a dismissive bad boy: they’ll ignore you 95 per cent of the time but then rub up and down your leg and you’ll think ‘wow!’
Whoever thought cat food could be such a complex psychological subject?

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Stowaway cat’s 2,000-mile trip

A WANDERING cat has ended up in Preesall, Lancashire after surviving a 2,000-mile journey stuck in a container.
Ziggy, named after the David Bowie character Ziggy Stardust as it has one blue eye and one green eye like the rock star, arrived in the UK after jumping aboard a ship in Israel.

The ship left the Israeli port of Haifa on October 31, and after docking in Liverpool the container was then taken to RSW Ltd in Whitworth, Rossendale, where Ziggy was finally released from his temporary home after 17 days confinement.

Over the weekend the white cat was taken to the Four Paws cat sanctuary in nearby Preesall where he is now in quarantine.

Peter Burke, the owner of Four Paws, said: ‘Ziggy has recovered from his ordeal really well; he’s a fit and healthy cat. He is eating plenty now, I think he’s making up for lost time with his food.

‘He will stay in quarantine with us now before being re-homed by the Cats Protection League.

‘There has been a bit of interest in him already, he’s a really loveable, playful cat so he shouldn’t be short of offers of a new home.

“Water is more important than food for a cat and I don’t think Ziggy could have survived without water.

‘I would think he has been drinking the moisture that’s come through the container on his journey.’

Staff at Four Paws believe that Ziggy is still a fairly young cat, probably between two-and-a-half and three years old.

• See ‘The Cat That Came In From The Cold’ by Anne Mears in the OUR CATS Annual 2007 for more tales of long-distance feline travellers.