Meowburn: The areas of Melbourne where cats reign over dogs

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Brunswick resident Jasmine Owen sees people “walking cats at the local ovals all the time”.

“I see people going for coffee at cafes with a cat in a pusher or a pram while they’re eating their breakfast,” she said. “It’s not a shocking thing. Not in this neighbourhood.”

Brunswick resident Jasmine Owen has five cats and four dogs.Credit: Wayne Taylor

That’s because she lives in a part of Melbourne where cats make up the lion’s share of pets.

Data from Central Animal Records, a national microchip database for pets, shows there are twice as many dogs than cats registered in Victoria. But there are 17 postcodes where cats outnumber dogs – almost all of them in Melbourne’s inner city.

Cats dominate in a bloc stretching from Southbank to Moonee Ponds, taking in the Melbourne CBD, West Melbourne, Docklands, Carlton, Carlton North, Fitzroy, Collingwood, Parkville, Brunswick, Brunswick East and Brunswick West.

There are 5346 cats registered in the postcode of Brunswick, compared with 4512 dogs. This doesn’t come as a surprise to Owen, who owns five cats and four dogs – a neat representation of her suburb’s ratio.

Postcodes in inner Melbourne with more cats than dogs show up as red on this map. You can switch tabs to view the data for the metropolitan Melbourne region or for all of Victoria, but once you start zooming out it becomes clear how dominant dogs are throughout the state.

Cats also outnumber dogs in a cluster of three postcodes in Melbourne’s inner south that takes in St Kilda, Prahran and Balaclava, as well as in an isolated pocket of Melbourne’s east in Burwood East.

The Melbourne postcode where cats most outnumbered dogs was the CBD, which is home to 4962 cats and 2913 dogs – that’s 17 city cats for every 10 dogs.

The Central Animal Records database encompasses just under two million dogs registered in Victoria and almost one million cats.

Central Animal Records managing partner Varun Uthappa said this database included about 75 per cent of all cats and dogs microchipped in Victoria and that it was the largest of its kind in Australia, having recently surpassed five million animals registered throughout the country.

The Central Animal Records database does not include strays or dogs that have not been microchipped or registered.

Uthappa said pet owners were reminded each year to check their pet’s details on the registry, which ensures the information remained up-to-date.

“It is important for people to get their pets microchipped and registered as it provides a reliable and permanent form of identification for the animals,” he said. “Microchipping helps us reunite lost pets with their owners, increasing the chances of pets returning home.”

“Our national registry listing also ensures that owners can be contacted even if their pet is found across state borders.”

The domestic short-hair cat was by far the most popular breed in Victoria. About 60 per cent of all cats registered in the state were domestic short hairs. Coming in second and third were its medium and long-haired varieties, followed by Ragdolls in fourth and Burmese cats in fifth.

Owen’s brood of five cats and four dogs is so big people assume she’s a professional dog walker when they spot her taking them out around Merri Creek.

She said while some people are perplexed at her decision to have so many pets, most people smile when they learn they are all hers. “They’re my babies,” she said.

Fellow Brunswick resident Niall Somerville had always been a dog person. Having grown up in Western Australia there was almost always a labrador in his family’s big backyard.

Niall Somerville has splashed out on a floor to ceiling cat tree for Iggy.Credit: Eddie Jim

But when Somerville followed his heart to Melbourne almost seven years ago after meeting Megan Coningsby, a cat lover who had recently farewelled her pet and wanted another, they adopted Iggy and Nico from a rescue shelter. He became a cat man.

Since becoming one of Brunswick’s legion of cat lovers, Somerville and his partner have splashed out on some plush items for the pets. He said the most expensive items in their apartment belong to the cats.

Pet paraphernalia includes a grass patch for the balcony, cat-safe plants, a $1200 app-controlled litter robot and a $1000-plus floor-to-ceiling cat tree.

“I’ve become a full-blown cat dad. We have more photos on our phone of our cats than we do our wedding, our travel, our life, our food, all that stuff.

“We have something like 10,000 photos of our cats. It’s pretty ridiculous and a little bit pathetic but they are just such a big part of our life.”

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