How was this month’s pet registration deadline day for you?
The now-mandatory animal ownership system in Abu Dhabi brought queues and queries to veterinary practices ahead of February 3, with many people – this contributor included – compelled into action to avoid the Dh1,000 fine per animal for potential non-compliance with the new scheme.
Pet owners filled the waiting areas at my local practice, while staff patiently answered phone queries that arrived with metronomic frequency, as concerned callers sought to clarify what they needed to do to register their cats or dogs and whether they were liable to a fine. If phones still do ring off the hook, they certainly were doing just that last week.
Credit must be given to veterinary healthcare teams around the capital who dealt admirably with what must have been an exceptionally busy period and were able to get pets swiftly checked out and registered.
In our case, the net result was that our two microchipped domestic cats needed their vaccinations brought up to date. They were also checked over for their general health and well-being during their consultation.
Both now appear in the “My Family” space of Tamm, the Abu Dhabi government services app. Registration for the ownership scheme itself was free, but the requirement for booster shots understandably incurred a charge. We will need to reregister them next year, of course, or risk a non-compliance fine of Dh500 per animal.
The process was another example of the kind of frictionless bureaucracy that the Tamm “super-app” has come to represent. Last year, Tamm said Abu Dhabi’s citizens, residents and businesses made more than 12.7 million transactions annually and used the technology for anything from paying traffic fines, to renewing rental agreements and now pet registration.
In line with other procedures on the app, registration required a quick and easy UAE Pass-enabled interaction. It only took a few minutes to formally establish the digital “paw-prints” of our two cats.
Advocates of pet registration schemes rightly point out that these programmes support animal welfare and create a higher bar for abandonment by increasing accountability among owners.
As we have previously reported, industry professionals have praised the introduction of the system here, describing it as a “unifying” moment for pet owners, pet shops and vet practices across the emirate that will aid recovery of cats if they go missing.
“If they are not microchipped or registered anywhere, it can be almost impossible to put people back in touch with their pet,” one industry professional told The National last month.
There are, however, some circumstances when chipping and documenting is not enough.
Our family’s own past was punctuated five years ago by a cat we’d "owned" for years and who had been microchipped, wandering out of the house to withdraw from the world after a period of illness and successive surgeries.
We walked the streets for days afterwards looking for and calling out for her. We circulated pictures and repeatedly checked every conceivable hiding place in the neighbourhood. We did not find her despite searching high and low, but time and absence forced us to accept the inevitable fact that she was gone for good.
One trusts that deregistration of an animal will also be stress-free under the new system if similar circumstances play out for others. One possible unexpected side-effect of the new system may be to persuade more owners to keep their cats indoors or in secure areas more of the time.
The scheme should, in time, also provide data points on how many cats are in the city, which in turn would help formally quantify what economic activity is associated with pets. Various estimates have been made in the past, but we should now get real data.
This will provide a fascinating insight, but it obviously won’t account for undocumented animals.
Previous estimates have suggested there are thousands of stray cats in the broader community. Trap, neuter and return programmes have operated for years and have made a difference in helping control that segment of the cat population, but it is unclear to me at least how long-standing street cats intersect with the scheme and whether a fine would be incurred for formally introducing an older stray by registering, vaccinating and microchipping them.
It may be that potential owners who would in times past have converted a street cat into a so-called sofa cat could now decide the new registration system is not for them and, instead, leave that animal outside the scheme.
That much is the liability side of the argument.
The other side is that the registration system promotes responsible ownership. The introduction of the scheme moves us from a point where grey areas could once be used by a few lackadaisical owners to abandon pets without consequence, to a place where there are clear requirements for carers.
As such, it leaves responsible owners free to carry on their lives with their pets as they always have done, and places the spotlight on the irresponsible to conform and do better. That is how things should be.
