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Fur’s flying

Fur’s flying

THE fur is flying between Maylands MP Lisa Baker and Bayswater mayor Sylvan Albert.

The Labor MP accuses the council of failing to enforce a local law it passed in October that limits the number of cats allowed per property.

It’s the latest in a string of complaints she’s made about the council since Cr Albert—who’d stood against her as the Liberal candidate for Maylands—was elevated to the mayoralty.

“Maylands residents tell me they have cats entering their roof space and using it as a toilet,” Ms Baker says.

“They cannot open their windows on some days due to the overwhelming stench of cat urine.

“They have to deal with the year-round stench of cat urine and faeces, cats fighting in the middle of the night, strays and flea infestations.

“These residents are demanding action from Bayswater council.”

Cr Albert notes the council introduced a local law to limit each household to six cats—after the WA government failed to do so—but it cannot be applied retrospectively.

“Ms Baker does seem to have taken an extraordinary interest in local government matters lately and I can only speculate as to why that might be,” he says.

“Perhaps she has ambitions to give up state politics and run as a prospective councillor in the next local government elections.

“Although you could perceive her criticism as politically motivated, I would hope that is not the case.”

He wonders whether Ms Baker showed the same level of interest in cat numbers when the Cat Act was before the state parliament.

Ms Baker says cat hoarding is an ongoing problem. “The council can no longer make excuses for not taking action to control excessive cat numbers and pretending that this is not its responsibility,” she says.

“There are properties in the Maylands area that have dozens of cats, which are not registered, sterilised or microchipped.

“At one Maylands property, neighbours report between 60 to 80 cats.”

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

867 Bali Secret Beauty Spa 20x3

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3 responses to “Fur’s flying”

  1. Disgruntled Maylands Resident Avatar
    Disgruntled Maylands Resident

    Oh! Cr Albert, you take no action because you believe this is political motivated? Uhh!

    This is because we went to see Lisa Baker MLA last year. It has been a decade old issue, and the council has been unable and unwilling to take action, instead the council prefers to do paperwork and nothing else.

    That woman breed new cats each year and claiming they are existing cats, yet the council don’t even go to identify which ones were existing cats in the first place. That woman also built new structures, and structures over the fence and the council told us to get a surveyor at our expense to prove her structures are on our land.

    We have cats walking on our roof tiles every night, urinating and defecating in our gardens, damaging out plants, fighting and screaming through the night. Hope you sleep well.

    Reply
  2. Lucy Avatar
    Lucy

    What an arrogant, nonsensical reply from Cr Albert. I could care less about Lisa Baker’s motivation for raising this issue. The fact remains that there are serious cat-hoarding problems in Maylands. Despite introducing a local law to control cat numbers, NOTHING has been done to enforce it. One of the offending neighbours has since registered one cat, despite the fact that she owns at least fifty (many of which are small kittens, so the retrospective excuse does not apply). How does the City of Bayswater intend to keep tabs on how many cats their residents own?
    As a former neighbour of a Maylands cat hoarder, I can assure you that my family and I suffered enormously. My small children were constantly covered in flea bites (despite not owning any pets of our own), our cars were always covered in scratches, paw prints, fur and blood. We lost sleep because we had cats thundering across our roofs at all hours of the night, fighting and mating. The stench was indescribable. We trapped and removed several cats from our property and the cat haven euthanised them immediately. They were diseased, unregistered and unsterilized. The cat haven classed them all as ‘feral’ cats.
    It beggars belief that any modern-day suburban council would allow this to go on. If nothing is done to enforce this law, I would hope that a class-action is filed against the City of Bayswater to compensate for the damage, loss of property value, vet bills (the feral cats regularly attack pet cats) and mental distress suffered by the neighbours of cat hoarders in the area.
    For the record, I’ve been a life-long Liberal voter. Cr Albert, your arrogant dismissal of a local concern has me considering a switch. And, while I don’t think she was raising this issue with that intention, I HOPE Lisa Baker gets your throne.

    Reply
  3. Helen Avatar
    Helen

    Regardless of Cr Albert’s attempt in dragging political motivation into the picture, the fact which remains is: we residents and ratepayers are very unhappy with Bayswater Council’s lack of will to tackle our neighbour’s cat hoarding problem, that’s why we had to try to find other allies, to get the Council to stop ignoring our complaints and putting their heads in the sand. It was merely window dressing passing the law, but not good enough until they actually enforce it to address the issue which has plagued the neighbourhood for years.

    Reply

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