According to Bella Hochman, cat control bylaws already exist in Edmonton, Calgary, Halifax, Toronto and other Canadian cities. She said her neighbours’ cats took a great liking to her garden over the past summer, and she wasn’t able to plant fruit or vegetables as a result.

“These cats are using it as a litter box,” she told Côte St. Luc city council earlier this month. Hochman said she has spoken to her neighbours on numerous occasions about their cats, “and they just don’t see a need to keep the cats indoors. They say that they’re perfectly fine to be outdoors and there’s no need to keep them in.”

Hochman said cat feces are a health hazard “and a threat to humans, especially people who are immune-suppressed. A certain number of people in the community are immune-suppressed.” She referred specifically to toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease which infects warm-blooded animals, including humans, although the primary hosts are cats.

Animals become infected by eating infected meat, by ingestion of feces of a cat that has itself recently been infected, or by transmission from mother to fetus. Cats have been shown to be a major reservoir of the infection. “I’ve heard many complaints from residents in our area about outdoor cats and the nuisance they cause, and there’s nothing that can be done, because there’s no bylaw,” she said.

“Now obviously other cities have seen the need for this bylaw, and interestingly enough, these bylaws for cats are only maybe two or three years old. So I don’t know what’s happened over the last two or three years, but these cities have seen a necessity for it.

“Basically, the premise of all these bylaws is licensing for cats and controlling of the cats from visiting neighbours’ lawns, gardens, etc.,” she added. “In other words, keeping them indoors, or if you put them out on a leash, just like we do with dogs.” Hochman noted that at one time, there were no bylaws in most cities for controlling dogs.

“I can recall my father telling me about dogs roaming the streets and bylaws for dogs were unheard of. But then finally cities in Canada decided we need bylaws for dogs, and now it’s rare to see packs of dogs in the streets — I’ve never personally seen that — but yet we allow cats to do that. But cats are also a threat.”

Hochman, who researched the topic over the Internet, cited the case of a cat that had scratched the eye of a dog. The dog became ill and finally had to be put down. “This was a cat that was outdoors,” she said. “At one time, for some reason, this wasn’t considered serious, but now you have all kinds of scientific papers showing that toxo is a health hazard … I believe that we should look seriously into getting a bylaw that would cover this.”

Mayor Anthony Housefather promised to examine the issue more closely, although he said he was unaware of other municipalities’ response. “I don’t know of other municipalities in our area that have this,” he said. “But we’ll look at what other cities are doing.”