Cat runs where pet felines have to be contained and "cat-free" suburbs could become common across Australia if local councils, backed by scientists, have their way.
At a cat symposium in Perth this week, scientists reiterated the massive toll cats take on native animals.
They said many people did not understand that domestic cats, as well as feral cats, were responsible for the devastation.
Australian National University wildlife ecologist Sarah Legge estimated pet cats killed over 340 million native animals a year.
"For a start, there's actually more pet cats in the country than there are feral cats so we have over five million pet cats but … a bit over two million feral cats," Professor Legge said.
"Pet cats kill wildlife but a lot of pet owners aren't aware of that because they don't see their pet cats hunting.
"But your cat will only bring back on average 20 per cent of of what it kills.
"So for every bird you find on your doormat, there's another four lying somewhere under the bushes on average."
Professor Legge, who has 18 years of experience measuring the impact of cats, joined other scientists, conservation groups and Indigenous rangers at the three-day event at the University of Western Australia.
She worked on the Threatened Species Recovery Hub, which provided some of the first robust data on cat numbers and their impact across Australia.
Councils 'hampered' by government
That research found feral cats in the bush kill about 790 mammals, birds, reptiles and frogs a year, while a pet cat, if allowed to roam and hunt, kills about 186 of those creatures a year.
Professor Legge said the management of pet cats fell to local government but, according to a recent survey, many councils were struggling to pass laws to keep pet cats contained.
"Local governments are taking this very seriously and doing their best but they found the whole issue really frustrating and one of the reasons they found it frustrating was that they weren’t supported by state government to get that job done," she said.
"In fact, the state government legislation was often hampering what they were trying to do."
Just one third of owners contain cats
About 27 per cent of Australian households have a pet cat and Professor Legge said about a third of those kept them indoors or within an enclosure.
"It's actually pretty normal; 30 per cent of cat owners already keep their cats contained. We just need to increase that proportion."
The ACT now has 17 suburbs where cats need to be contained, but in Western Australia attempts by local councils to bring in similar laws have failed.
Among them was the City of Kwinana, south of Perth where Mayor Carol Adams said there was strong community support to keep pet cats out of the city's sprawling areas of natural bush.
"We have a feral cat problem and we also have a domestic cat problem," she said.
"We have lots of areas with bandicoots, beautiful bird life and we know that they are taking a hit.
"Just the resources alone to try and keep cats out, it's impossible … it's time-consuming and it's resource-intensive."
Councillor Adams said the council recently tried to introduce a local law to contain pet cats, but it was knocked back by a parliamentary committee because it didn't comply with the state laws.
"Last year when we attempted to do that, the parliamentary-delegated legislation committee actually disallowed us and other local governments from attempting to make this local law," she said.
Time to get 'serious': mayor
Councillor Adams is among those calling for urgent reforms to the 2011 state legislation.
"…Let's get serious about this, we really need to protect our wildlife," she said.
"Local governments, all we can do at the moment is educate, through micro-chipping, sterilisation, registration…really promoting responsible cat ownership."
Although the cat symposium was addressed by WA's Environment Minister Reece Whitby, the minister declined an interview with the ABC about the calls to reform the laws.
Local Government Minister John Carey also declined to be interviewed but released a statement saying that the existing Cat Act provided local governments with a range of powers to manage cats and the legislation would be reviewed next year, as scheduled.
A lack of consistency
But, for many scientists and local councils, that timeline is too far away.
Kwinana was just one of a number of West Australian councils that have tried but failed to bring in new cat containment laws.
James Trezise from the Invasive Species Council said the issue needed to be a priority for governments.
"We'd like to see immediate changes to Western Australian law to enable local governments to implement cat containment," he said.
"We'd also like to see a nationally harmonised approach."
Mr Trezise said the patchwork of laws across the country meant some states were doing little to contain pet cats, while others were clamping down.
"We've got 38 local governments in Victoria that either have 24/7 containment or some form of curfew and that's to protect cats and and also protect native wildlife."
Mr Trezise acknowledged that for some cat owners, whose pets had always had their freedom, new containment laws could be daunting.
But he said changes could be phased in with "grandfathering clauses" that meant cats born before a certain period were not required to be contained, as had happened in the ACT.
Call to help people transition
Funding should also be allocated to people on low incomes to help them comply, according to Professor Legge.
"There are programs in place to subsidise things like desexing, perhaps that could be extended to building catios in someone's backyard," she said.
"I guess the general point is that I agree that we need to support people in a transition to a different style of pet cat management."
On a positive note, Professor Legge said public awareness of the impact of cats, both feral and domestic, was higher here than in other countries and that Australia continued to lead the world with its network of cat-free areas, protecting vulnerable native mammals.
"There's about a hundred islands and about 30 fenced enclosures [on the mainland] fulfilling this role and without that network, there are eight species that would definitely be extinct,:" she said.
"And the reason I know that is that they only survive now in one of these areas.
"The are completely gone from the rest of the Australian landscape."
