Länsstyrelsens arbete med omhändertagna katter : beslut om försäljning/överlåtelse eller avlivning

Abstract: In Sweden it is the County Administrative Board’s responsibility to control that the animal keepers follow the animal welfare legislation. Sometimes when the animal keepers do not follow the legislation the County Administrative Board decides to take animals into charge. When they do so they also must decide what is to happen with the animals. The different options they have to decide is whether to sell, relocate or euthanize the animal. The aim of this essay was threefold: (1) to create an overview of how many cats three different County Administrative Boards decided to sell/relocate or euthanize, during the time period 2019-04-01 to 2022-03-31, (2) to conclude what motivated the decisions to put down the cats, and (3) to conclude to what extent the decisions to put down the cats correspond with the given laws of this matter. To gain knowledge about this, public documents about the decisions was demanded from the County Administrative Board’s, and read through. Further were the decisions compared with laws in the subject. Given the sources of error identified during the work, no definitive conclusions can be drawn regarding the distribution of cats that are sold/relocated or euthanized of the County Administrative Boards. Regarding the second question about what motivated the decisions of euthanizing the cats, it is indicated that most cats are euthanized for medical reasons, then medical and mental reasons, further mental reasons, and a minority of other reasons. Regarding the third and final question, to what extent the reasons for the decision to euthanize cats are in accordance with current legislation, it can be concluded that an overwhelming majority, 98,60% of the decisions, agree with how the decisions are to be made.