Late to the thread, but I am not totally against tethering...HOWEVER not as a sole means to confining a dog. We tether our dog, but only for short periods--like 10-30 minutes at the most--since he's an indoor dog. It gives him a few minutes to enjoy the outdoors by himself and seems to help control where he does his business. The cruelty of tethering comes into to play (OBVIOUSLY) when people go to work and leave their dogs chained to a tree or pole for nine or more hours a day simply for their own convenience. Tethering a cat is a totally different ballgame. Certainly a dog on the run has the capacity to be much more vicious, but cats (especially Toms) can be rather bold as well. As for the animal population, really not having a cat-tethering law only gives irresponsible owners no reason to spay or neuter their outdoor cats because there is not legal consequences.
I think you mean leash law. The Town of Clayton, as far as I know, is the only one that exempts cats from leash laws. What leash laws say, basically, is that any domestic animal must be contained or under the immediate control of the owners. That could be inside a secure fence, or with an underground electric fence, or on a leash, or until recently tethered. It means dogs and cats and ferrets and whatever other animals people keep as pets are not allowed to run around loose. Certainly dogs are more easily controlled than cats, and loose dogs are generally more dangerous and scarier than cats, but cats running around loose can be dangerous as well as a nuisance. Most cats can live a long, healthy, happy life indoors. Cats that live indoors live several times longer than outdoor cats or indoor-outdoor cats. I know there are outdoor cats that live a long time, but they are the exception. Outdoor cats get hit by cars, killed by other animals, and die from diseases they get outdoors. Keeping a cat indoors is doing the cat a favor.
Yeah, I'm sort of blurring the two I suppose. No way I'd walk a cat on a leash...especially one that retains its claws. I agree that cats really should be mostly kept indoors when living in town. Now a lot of folks in the country keep them for micers, but so many cats in town and you'll see so many of them hanging around, fighting and multiplying. The neighbor's cat wiped out a whole dove nest this summer. Stole the eggs out of the nest and then killed both mama and daddy over about the course of a week.
I actually tried to train mine to walk on a leash, back when we were traveling in the motor home. They were having nothing to do with it! :lol::lol: So they got to stay inside the MH while we walked around outside, just like at home. But I guess my point really, was to say that having a leash law apply to cats doesn't mean you have to walk your cat on a leash, it just means you don't let them run around loose. Keeping them inside solves the problem nicely.
