18/12/2024
🐾🚨 What to Do If You Find a Stray or Lose a Pet 🚨🐾
During the festive season, the numbers of stray animals and missing pets increase dramatically.
Here’s what to do if you find a stray and some tips to keep your own pets safe.
✅ The SPCA’s Role
- Appointed City Facility: The SPCA is the City of Cape Town’s appointed facility for the admission of stray animals. City By-Laws mandate that stray animals must be reported to the SPCA within 24 hours of rescue. This is to establish a central hub of data so that the SPCA can help reunite owners with their missing pets. The SPCA is often the first-place owners search for their missing pets. Keeping strays in private care can delay reunions or prevent them altogether. The SPCA has a Lost and Found Department dedicated to finding the owners of stray pets.
- Emergency Rescues: The SPCA dispatches vehicles 24/7 to rescue injured or ill strays.
✅ Law Enforcement’s Role
- Authority Over Free-Roaming Animals: Only Law Enforcement Animal Control can uplift healthy and free-roaming strays. The SPCA does not have this authority.
- Admit Healthy Strays to the SPCA: Law Enforcement collects and admits healthy stray animals to the SPCA.
✅ Your Role
- If you find a healthy stray animal, report this to Law Enforcement by calling 021 480 7700. Provide the animal with shelter, food and water if possible and keep the reference number provided to you by Law Enforcement in a safe place.
- If you find an injured or sick stray animal, call the SPCA on 021 700 4158/9 for assistance. We are available on this number 24/7.
💡 If Your Own Pet Goes Missing
1. Report: your pet as missing to the SPCA (you can do this via our website), Also report to local veterinary practises, and other animal welfare organisations.
2. Act Quickly: Post to social media, send WhatsApp’s to your network including your neighbourhood watch and active the Pet Rescuer Network™ if your pet has an Identipet microchip.
Microchip: If your own pet does not have a microchip, now is the best time to get one!
👉 Read the full article here for more info on helping strays and keeping your own pets safe: https://pulse.ly/4uqdf2z4fk
Identipet