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Los Angeles Considers Upping The Number Of Cats You Can Keep
Kittens at a pop-up adoption event in Chinatown (Photo by Jean Trinh/LAist)
A Los Angeles committee will consider changing the number of cats you can own from three to five today. Or, as most cat people know, the number of cats that can own you.Under current city code, you can only have more than three cats if you have a kennel permit. However, Councilman Paul Koretz, who chairs the Los Angeles City Council's Personnel and Animal Welfare Committee, filed a motion in November 2013 that indicated the three-cat limit may be preventing cat adoption, CBS LA reports.
The Committee and local animal services authorities think that if people could own five cats without having to pay for a kennel license, more cats would be adopted and less strays would be on the streets. This would also potentially cut the number of cats being euthanized, as well as allow people who already have three cats to temporarily foster other cats when shelters run out of room. Pet owners will have to spay or neuter their cats.
Koretz said that it's typically hard to enforce cat limits anyhow unless a neighbor complains, and that this would be a way of legalizing what some people are already doing.
In San Diego and Santa Monica, which currently have no limits on how many cats you can have, there hasn't been an increase in cat hoarding.
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