An east Melbourne suburb will soon make it illegal for cats to roam free from their owner's home under a new 24-hour cat curfew.
Cats will be required to remain inside residential private properties, but can venture into the front and back yards and garages, in a bid to keep felines off the streets.
Knox City Council is encouraging cat owners to create cat enclosures or cat-proof fences before the local government law is enforced in October.
7News understands the Knox City Council will issue warnings in the first six months of the curfew, but after that will impose fines if a cat is spotted outside a property.
An AU$91 fine will be handed down if it's a first warning, but owners could be fined up to AU$545 for continuous breaches.
“Either we’d have to build another fence to section it off or we’d have to cover the whole backyard, which would be expensive,” local cat owner Charlotte Jensen told 7NEWS.
Knox City Council will also conduct random door knocks to check for unregistered pets, with an AU$330 fine for failure to do so.
