Swedish authorities may intervene in breeding dispute to prevent cat in heat peeing on walls

Swedish authorities could step in and confiscate a cat called Ove and try to get him to breed with a Stockholm woman's cat, after she reported a contract breach and fears her love-sick pet cat will start misbehaving soon. The plea for help comes after the woman, who lives in Johanneshov, southern Stockholm, ran into trouble shoring up a date for her pet cat with a tomcat called Ove.

For unspecified reasons, Ove's owner has backed out of the arrangement, leaving the plaintiff concerned that if a mate isn't found quickly for her in-heat cat, the pet will start urinating on the walls, a behavioural habit the owner claims is irreversible. The frustrated Stockholm cat owner decided to make a complaint to the Enforcement Agency, an authority mostly known for collecting debts but which also regulates contract disputes between Swedish citizens - including contracts pertaining to animals' breeding life.



"It's not so unusual for us to make these kinds of decisions," Caroline Riderstål, the Enforcement Agency supervisor for the case, said. Lawyers at the state agency have now ruled in the female cat owner's favour, which in practice means Riderstål's colleagues could march on over to Ove's house, confiscate him, and, in Riderstål's words, "make him available" to the complainant's cat.

"But we of course favour dialogue, and hope they will come to an agreement on how to solve this," Riderstål said, adding that she was sure her colleagues in the law department had taken any relevant animal rights legislation into account in making their decision. "We came to a decision on a contract basis and such instances crop up from time to time - it can be about anything at all," she said. "The cat owner filed the complaint with us because she wanted action."