Wednesday, April 16, 2025–8:50 a.m.

-David Crowder, WRGA News-

The Rome City Commission has approved an ordinance that requires cats and dogs to be spayed or neutered and micro-chipped.

The regulations apply to cats over the age of four months and dogs over the age of six months.

“This ordinance is a mirror image of the ordinance that passed about a year-and-a-half ago by the county,” said Rome City Commissioner Harry Brock. “We are trying to get some consistency with them, just to be able to know how they are functioning, like if a dog runs into a next door neighbor’s yard, and one is in the county and one is in the city. It’s just to make it consistent with the ordinance the county already has in place.

There are exceptions to the rules such as if the animal is currently unable to be safely altered due to health concerns, the owner is a registered and licensed Georgia Pet Dealer and the animal in question is kept for purposes of commercial breeding or if the animal is a working dog, like herding, show, draft, sporting, or hunting.

You can read the ordinance here.