05/10/2026
This is especially important for rural cat guardians in Golden Bay to be aware of, but town folks need to know about it too. Cat disappearances have been increasing in Golden Bay, along with the rest of the country, ever since "feral" cats were added to DoC's Predator Free 2050 "pest species" list. A number of our beautiful "graduates" have gone missing in the past year, which breaks our hearts along with their families.
We support microchipping and registration because it can help reunite missing pets with their families. But every trapper needs to be legally required to scan for a chip, and release any chipped cat, or else chips provide no protection for companion and community cats. And remember that the actual definition of a "feral" cat is one that lives far away from human habitation and does not have any interaction with or dependence on humans. So there is no excuse for trapping or killing any cat in Golden Bay's township and rural settlements.
🚩 Predator Free NZ wants your cat microchipped. The same organisation admits it can't tell your cat from a feral one. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
Predator Free NZ Trust is one of the loudest voices calling for compulsory microchipping and a National Cat Act. Here's what their own chief executive told Parliament in 2023:
"Without compulsory microchipping, we can't tell what cats are private property, what cats are owned and what cats are unowned."
"We can't actually operate on the ground and struggle to identify if it's an owned cat or a feral cat."
That's the organisation with the funding, the policy team and the national campaign. They're telling you, in writing, that they can't tell the difference.
So what happens with the backyard trapper who's never heard of, or never read a guideline, and doesn't think checking for a microchip is any part of the job?
We all see the cat hate out there, with comments like 'any cat roaming is a dead cat'.
On Trap.NZ's own forums, one trapper described his network of DOC250 traps, approved for stoats and ferrets, not cats, catching "almost as many Feral Cats as we do Ferrets." Scroll the whole thread. Nobody in it describes checking whether any of those cats were feral at all. Not once.
Badger was neutered and microchipped. He still vanished from Onetangi, Waiheke Island, in November 2025, and was never found.
Charlie, was neutered and microchipped. Vanished from a Lifestyle block in Tauranga, January 2026. Never found.
These are cats that always come home. And since feral cats were put on the menu, we are seeing cats disappearing at an alarming rate.
Even Auckland Council, with an actual scanning process, a quiet room, a second check, only returned 1 of the 50 cats trapped at Whakanewha Regional Park since 2022 to its owner.
Councils are moving to make microchipping compulsory anyway. Ashburton has proposed it, sold explicitly as a safeguard, its Mayor says it "helps protect domestic cats if they're caught in traps." But she's also said: "You're not going to see Council out picking up cats and scanning them for microchips."
Dunedin is considering the same rule.
So here's the real question for every bylaw like this: will it require the trapper to scan — or does the whole safeguard rest on the owner's chip, and nobody else's responsibility?
If a trained council team with a protocol gets 1 in 50, and the organisation pushing microchipping admits its own staff "struggle to identify" an owned cat from a feral one, a backyard trap with nobody required to check at all isn't a loophole. It's the default.
Microchipping your cat doesn't protect it from a trap or a killer. It only protects it from one if whoever's holding the trap is required to check.
Right now, almost none of them are checking for a microchip.
💬 Watch your Council for any bylaws and tell your council: this bylaw needs to make trappers scan and he responsible — or just make owners responsible for a check nobody has to carry out.
