The Peaceable Kin-dom

28/10/2026

How can fireworks "fun" be worth causing this kind of terror?!

If you agree, please read, sign and share.

25/10/2026

Sadly, this applies to New Zealand as well. Please help us help the kitties, in any way you can. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1724036229107330

20/10/2026

Suddenly it seems NO CAT IS SAFE, ANYWHERE in New Zealand!

The following is a post from The Floof Collective, an organisation that does research and cat advocacy work that small rescues like ours don't have the time to do, but we greatly appreciate and agree with.

From The Floof Collective's post accompanying the attached video:

"SCAN BEFORE YOU KILL!

A few months ago I posted in a local community group, looking for one of my cats.

A resident replied that they trap feral cats and put them down.
Not mine, they said. There are "loads around here."

I asked: do you scan for microchips on the cats you kill?
The answer: "it's clear as day which cats are feral."

Yet Predator Free Trust themselves have stated, its hard to tell Feral from Companion. Any cat - feral, lost, abandoned, displaced or companion - will act wild in a trap.

Yet people are judging for themselves.
No scanner. No check. No record. Just a judgement by eye.

This isn't about one person. Many neighbours are trapping cats. It's about a gap anyone can fall through. Feral cats are now an official Predator Free 2050 target. The government says pet cats are NOT, but no national rule requires anyone to check before a cat is killed.

A stray, a lost cat, a scruffy indoor-outdoor cat, a frightened cat far from home: any of them can look feral when terrified in a trap, especially to someone who has already made up their mind.

We MUST call for a microchip scan by all trappers. Vets, shelters and councils already have scanners. TRAPPERS SHOULD, TOO.

If we chip our cats, under any bylaw, the least we can expect is that someone checks before taking them away for good.

Our ask is simple: scan before you kill.

Responsible Trapping is a MUST. Every cat, every time, by everyONE.

Cat families, please share this.

Vets, rescues, councils: will you back it?

🐾 The Floof Collective

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1GntVpmQTo/

15/10/2026

Donations gratefully accepted:
NBS 03-1354-0535381-00
The Peaceable Kin-dom

15/10/2026

The text below, from The Floof Collective, accompanies the attached video but is too difficult to read over the video itself. So we've copied it here. If you've ever loved a cat, or if you simply believe in kindness and fairness, please read it, share, and make your opinions known - locally, to DOC and MPI, AND to your elected representatives.

At The Peaceable Kin-dom, we totally agree with everything in The Floof Collective's statement, and we urge the government to adopt all the safeguards that it recommends.

Currently, NO dedicated cat rescue organisations sit on the National Cat Management Group (NCMG), the body that makes decisions that potentially affect the lives of every cat - and cat guardian - in New Zealand.

Until we have a coalition of cat rescuers who can speak with a united voice - and many of us are working to form such a coalition - it's up to individual rescues and our supporters to speak up and demand DOC, Predator Free NZ Trust, and its government-supported community trapping affiliates be regulated and held to account for harms done to people's feline family members.

Please read The Floof Collective's recommendations, below:
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DOC said “before”. It’s already here.

DOC’s own advice says companion-cat rules should come BEFORE Predator Free 2050 moves into the places where our cats live:

“DOC to begin consideration of what national regulatory changes relating to companion and stray cats may be required before a future roll out of PF2050 in predominantly urban and rural areas.”

But trapping is already in our backyards. Predator Free NZ Trust, which gets 76% of its income from government, supports more than 2,000 community trapping groups and funds backyard trapping communities across the country.

The traps are here. The protections aren’t.

DOC’s briefing also says “responsibly owned companion cats are part of the predator free vision.” If that’s true, they need protecting now:

We are calling for:

1. Presumption of ownership in residential and its close rural areas: Any cat caught where people live is treated as a companion animal, not a feral, and goes to a vet, the SPCA or the council. The trapper never decides on the spot whether it’s “feral”. This is the most important one, because it works even when a cat has no microchip.

2. Named traps: Every trap set in a residential area carries the trapper’s name or registered ID. If a cat is hurt, someone is answerable for it. It’s simple, cheap and hard to argue against, and dog registration works on the same idea.

3. Tell the neighbours: Anyone setting traps that can catch a cat must let nearby households know. Owners can then keep cats in or check traps, and it creates eyes on the ground.

4. Report every catch, by type: Funded groups record every animal caught in its own category, including cats, with a photo, on a public register.

5. Make funding conditional: Groups that take public money, like the Trust’s backyard communities, must follow a companion-animal code, complete training and report honestly.

6. Funding stops if they breach it: This is the lever government already holds, because 76% of the Trust’s money is public.

7. Cat-safe traps near homes. No kill traps, no leg holds. No cat poison: I'd rather no trapping at all near homes, but if we have no choice, then funded programmes in residential zones use only trap designs approved as not able to catch cats.

8. No cat bounties: Keep competitions and prizes for cats out of bounds.

9. Those in bylawed area with microchip: Scan every cat in the trap. Registerees (cat guardians) also need the choice to register under their own name or their vet. Trappers must be held accountable for what they are killing.

10. Every trapper group must be advised on cat safety, trained and also have strong responsibilities to the community.

TAKE ACTION NOW: Election day is 7 November. Ask your candidates: will you put companion-cat protections in place now, while the traps are already in our streets?

📄 Sources: DOC briefing 25-B-0436, para 32 (OIA). Charities Register CC49533. Predator Free NZ Trust, Predator Free Communities Funding.
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NOTE from The Peaceable Kin-dom: We're sharing this post on all our community FB pages, because cat guardians need to know what is at stake, that may affect their cats and thus their own lives. We invite thoughtful discussion on OUR FB page, while turning off comments elsewhere to avoid distracting discussions of issues that are irrelevant to this particular post.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2382063699269002/

15/10/2026

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

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.

03/10/2026

Doesn't this make you want to foster some kittens? With "kitten season" just starting, our main sanctuary is already over capacity, and we need foster homes if we're going to be able to rescue more. Fostering is very rewarding, and we provide know-how, ongoing support, supplies and equipment - and you can make your own whack-a-mole box! If you'd like to know more, please get in touch: 022 344 6606, email [email protected], or message The Peaceable Kin-dom

22/09/2026

Love essential oils? Love your pets? Learn how they can safely coexist in your home, with this FREE online webinar by "Essential Oil Vet" Dr Janet Roark. New Zealand date/time: Tuesday, Sept. 29, 1 pm. Replay/recording available later. Register for free at https://eo.essentialoilvet.com/safety-webinar

25/07/2026