The Peaceable Kin-dom

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The Peaceable Kin-dom

Here's an excellent free resource for anyone who's ever adopted a rescue dog, or thinks they might someday: The 3 Stages of Adjustment: Ethical Guidance for Welcoming a Rehomed Dog, by Dog Rehabilitation & Behaviour Expert Jo Middleton.

In this free 20-page guide, Middleton explains the emotional journey many rescue dogs experience when entering a new home.

Instead of rigid timelines like the popular “3-3-3 rule”, this framework focuses on the dog’s emotional needs and how to support them with patience, observation and compassion.

Inside the guide you’ll discover:

✔ The 3 emotional stages rescue dogs move through after adoption

✔ Why many dogs appear calm at first… then suddenly show challenging behaviours

✔ The early signals dogs show when they are overwhelmed or stressed

✔ What dogs truly need during the critical decompression stage

✔ How to support confidence during the adjustment and exploration phase

✔ The signs that real trust and emotional safety are beginning to develop

✔ When it may be time to seek professional behavioural support

This framework helps you understand what your dog may be feeling internally, so you can respond in ways that support their emotional recovery and long-term wellbeing.

A guide like this can make all the difference between settling into a forever home, and being returned to a rescue or shelter.

Download it for free at this link: https://www.canineethics.org/the-3-stages-of-adjustment

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.

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We totally support the proposals in this letter.
If you do, too, please add your name!
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19XMhwVRLU/

**UPDATE:**
WOW. You've all have blowen me away with your support today. What a massive effort! So much heart and it makes me proud to see everyone stand up for the cats💪🐈
We will have close to 500 names I think.

I will be updating and collating all the names tonight, along with our final edits. Any names coming in after 8.30pm can still be on the list, it will just be on our second round of letters. Realistically the letter will be published tomorrow evening all going well. Those of you that have requested a copy, I will get this to you as soon as possible - being tomorrow evening.

Cats now have a bounty on their heads.

Anne Batley Burton, myself and many other co-signatures have recently written formal letters to the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and the Department of Conservation (DOC) over how "feral" cats are being defined, hunted and killed under current government guidance, and how Companion, Stray and Displaced cats are being swept up and killed alongside them.

Here's what the letters say, in short:

There is no such thing, in law, as an "unwanted" cat — but government material inventing that category has opened the door to any cat someone personally doesn't want being treated as fair game.

MPI and DOC's own identification guidance can't actually tell a feral cat apart from a companion, stray, colony or displaced/lost cat. No collar, being frightened in a cage, ordinary coat colour, none of it is unique to feral cats. By DOC's own wording, a feral cat's coat and colouring look exactly like a companion cat's. It's practically impossible for any participant, let alone a child, to reliably tell an un-microchipped, free-roaming pet apart from a genuinely feral animal before a shot is taken.

Hunting competitions are proving the point in practice. Cats are shot first and checked for a microchip afterwards, once they're already dead, with no oversight of how they're killed, so wounding and prolonged suffering go unchecked. Well over 1,000 cats have been killed through the North Canterbury competition over the years it's run, and close to 400 in its most recent event alone.
Two more competitions are now promoted for the same weekend in September 18th, one of them explicitly marketed to children, the other as a family day.

Companion cats have been reported stolen from their own homes, along with missing cat statistic's, rise rapidly within the region's these competitions are being held. In effect, cats now have a bounty on their heads.

We're calling on MPI, DOC, and every councilor and candidate in this election to commit to three reforms:

🛑 Ban cash-prize killing competitions — no more bounties or cash incentives for killing domestic or invasive species.

🛑 Fund humane alternatives — invest in Trap-Neuter-Return and Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Return (TNR) programes instead of unmonitored hunting incentives and invest in Rescues, Colony Carers around New Zealand.

🛑 Licensed pest control only, confined to deep bush — end backyard and public trapping and killing of cats. Feral cat control should be carried out only by licensed, certified professionals, and only in the genuinely wild deep bush areas MPI and DOC themselves say it should be confined to — never in urban, lifestyle-block or semi-rural areas.

With the general election approaching, this is becoming an election issue, and we need your help right now:

If you believe:
Our cats are perishing at an alarming rate since being placed on the Predator Free list, and their welfare and safety are at extreme risk, we need you to help us push this letter further.

1. Let me know if you want your name added- every name is compiled and provided directly alongside our formal correspondence. Either PM me, email or comment.

2. Letter is due tomorrow evening, we will send you a copy to email your local councilor and MP — tell them you expect their commitment to these three reforms, and ask where they stand before you vote.

3. Share this post — the more people who see what's actually happening to New Zealand's cats, the harder it becomes for government to ignore.

No cat should lose its life because guidance can't tell the difference. Will you add your name today?

Marice Butler Feral No More Wendy Hodson Kathy White Jane Darby PUSSN BOOTS KITTY Rescue Natasha Lovett The Kitten Orphanage Predator Free Watchdog Gypsy's Paws Clare Waddick Elaine Mander Stacey Ess

UPCOMING FREE ONLINE CONFERENCE, playing Sept. 10 - 17 in New Zealand. An excellent opportunity to learn from 21 holistic veterinarians & other natural cat care & behaviour experts. Highly recommended. Get the full schedule and sign up at https://courses.newearthvet.com/conference-3-holistic-cat-conference.html