we are more human in a crisis

The reality of 2009 has hit home. Charity organisations are looking at their financial year-end balance sheets and balking. Donors, volunteers, are looking long and hard at their own finances and commitments. Many have lost jobs.

Animal welfare is perhaps the hardest hit for its very nature. TNP recently threw a spotlight on a jobless man in Ang Mo Kio who has 80 stray cats under his care. Reactions to the story echo a general public sentiment that the jobless man and his kind are out of their blinking minds, spending money on CATS of all things in this crisis where so many people could use that extra lifeline. This sentiment spills over to animal welfare work on the whole.

It often escapes them that quite simply, cats don’t eat money, nor dogs, birds, sharks or whales. We might try it for a lark but still perfectly legal tender following a rinse after regurgitation.

We merely ingest a small measure of raw materials that money can buy. The bulk of the money spent goes right back to people, and lots of them. If spending is the way out of this crisis like we keep getting told, animal people are certainly no small part of that equation!


Lucky for us, our caregivers are legendary for their single-minded obstinacy. No job, no money but don’t even think about suggesting that they discontinue their feeding rounds or with TNRM. They know enough from watching their cats how to gnaw the thinking parts off a cold hard household pest.

These aunties and uncles are the very people carrying the brunt of a country’s uncertain economic future, but somewhere along the line, they rejected everything that this society has taught them and made the conscious, unwavering decision to focus on something outside of themselves rather than their own problems.

In a crisis, they become more resourceful, more willing to ask for help, forming their own network of collaborators and sponsors, and taking advantage of all available subsidies from organisations like SPCA and the Cat Welfare Society. And they are doing it in english, in mandarin, in malay, in tamil and several dialects.

The way a Toa Payoh caregiver sees it, “When you have money, you have no time. When you have time, you have no money.” So they go about joining the dots between the people with money and the people with time.

All the more, they look to animal welfare organisations to provide a level playing field with their programmes and subsidies. These organisations are able to connect recipients with donors on a far larger scale than any individual or group, to the combined tune of $110,000 last year for cat sterilisation alone. This is up from $90,000 from the previous year.

And they need to meet this growing demand in good times and in bad.

If you are surviving the crisis with a little extra in your pocket, please consider giving to the SPCA and the Cat Welfare Society. Cats don’t need your money but the uncles and aunties who love us do.

Tooty would like to thank the generous people out there who contributed to the hoarding case. In particular, Cat Welfare Society, Paw Pledge and the anonymous individuals all the more noble for their anonymity.

cat abuse at choa chu kang

The 'worst case of cat mutilation' was discovered at Blk 550 Choa Chu Kang on Street 52 on 21 Feb 2009.

Last Sunday, a group of us went door to door in the vicinity to see what information we could find about the case as well as to ask the residents to participate in a petition for more security measures to be put in place in the area.

Most of the residents were not aware of what had happened in their neighbourhood, although a few had seen the SPCA reward posters on the notice boards or read the TNP article. But after being told what happened to the cat, many were noticeably shaken and eager to ask for something to be done.

This was not a case of a misguided hot-headed or frightened individual protecting themselves or their territory from an errant cat. Appalling as those cases are, many might shake their heads but ultimately, find no real bearing on their own safety. This crime on their doorstep is a grotesquely meticulous, pre-meditated act with a highly lethal weapon, very much the work of a troubled individual seeking release in the worst possible way. Enough studies have shown the correlation of such violence against animals to violence against humans and that message has made more than a few residents sit up and take notice.

And this was not an isolated case in Choa Chu Kang. Equally gruesome was the pregnant tri-colour cat found on 29 Nov 2008 at Blk 130 Choa Chu Kang Ave 1 with her stomach slit open and guts hanging out. That makes two cases in Choa Chu Kang where mutilation with a knife or sharp object is evident. Over the years in that estate, the caregiver has found and cared for countless more injured or dead cats, bashed in, run over by bicycles, thrown from high floors.


Statistics on animal abuse in Singapore number in the hundreds every year – 800 on average. Most of these are pet-related, outcomes of irresponsibility, negligence and plain old stupidity. These perpetrators are usually ordinary people with some vital deficiency and we know there are too many of them littering the earth. If education, threat of fines and public humiliation cannot get through to them, well, let’s hope there are enough busybodies in this world to call them out on their shortcomings.

Just as importantly, we need to take a magnifying glass to the actual number of violent crimes committed against animals every year and the mode of abuse. We’d like to think the individuals who would take these actions are few but they are also gallingly hard to apprehend. Better profiling and records can make all the difference. Perhaps SPCA or the police are monitoring these cases but as a lay person, the woman was not able to get much more information than the yearly reported statistics.

Hand in hand with that, we would like to remind people to report all abuse cases to SPCA or to the police, if only so that a comprehensive database of abuse can be built that might force authorities to take closer notice of this insidious underlying threat to society. It might one day even help build a case against a perpetrator.

As the woman was assigned the block directly next to Blk 550, she and another volunteer encountered quite a few households who heard distressed cat cries several nights in a row around the time the body of the kitten was found. Their hearts sank when they heard this. One young girl who told them about the cries was also visibly cut up. Let’s hope she never hears those cries again in her neighbourhood.

unknown soldier rests here

this cat got run over today. a friend finds her twitching and struggling by the side of the road with a huge dent where her stomach used to be and calls the woman. by the time she gets there, the cat is limp, ears cold, eyes wet, moving her hind legs ever so slightly back and forth.

on the way there, the woman alerts a group of caregivers feeding at a void deck nearby and they all come rushing to take a look. they recognise her. one of them finds a box and offers her towel for the cat's comfort as they wait for SPCA to come.

in that time, they manage to locate the specific caregiver for this cat and she rushes down to see her baby. the cat has a brother who have both been with her since a very young age. she decides to take the cat back with her to die a natural death in her home because she doesn't want her baby to die in some unknown place. also because her religion does not condone euthanasia.

would i prefer a quick mercy death in a strange cold place by a strange cold instrument, or a slow death in the arms of family? i don't know. i really don't.

Leafty joins the animal family

after a couple of weeks in cage, Rabbeet is let out to roam the apartment. he is happy enough entertaining itself but never quite gets used to human company. if you ask me, i think he had a tough old time out there too and knows to watch his back. cats are the same but we have a couple more defenses going for us so we don't mind the humans getting close. if they screw up, they get screwed if you know what i mean.

after 2 months, he starts to look a little lonely and the woman thinks about getting him a companion.

the woman signs up as a SPCA volunteer and goes to the briefing at Mount Vernon with her friend. in the mean time, they check out the pound and there sits Leafty in his cage. he captures their hearts immediately, but as Rabbeet has yet to be spayed, they decide to come back again in a week.

cooing about cute little Leafty all the way into town, their mania grows 'what if Leafty gets adopted within the week??!' 'no!' at scotts road they turn and drive all the way back to Mount Vernon to adopt the albino dwarf with the yellow pee stains.

he comes away from SPCA is a brown box, the very same one the woman stuffed me into on route to my uncertain fate at the SPCA. after a pedi/mani with the ladies at far east plaza, they take Leafty back to his new home and he becomes our no. 4 on 4 Dec 2005.

meet the woman

i am a cat. if you doubt, go look at my picture. i am starting this blog because i am increasingly disgruntled with my family and need to rant. read on at your own risk. it is not my intention to turn humankind against itself but if i do, well, you bloody deserve it.

since this blog is about the family, i will begin on the day i meet the woman. life as a stray is a bitch, especially for a cat like me that has had a good number of years in domestic bliss. i used to be cute but now people run from me ever since the street diet (when i get it) has given me a bad festering itch.

as with previous evenings, i wander towards the void deck where uncle leaves food out. its not bad when there's any left but wouldn't you know, cat with 1 tooth and no street skills is pretty low on the food chain so i wait for the others to finish.

woman gets off the cab and starts cooing like a nut. as the others scatter at her enthusiasm, i stuck to her leg meowing my sacharrine sweetest as she stoops and pets my head. she stops when she sees my bald scabby patches and runs. figures.

as i settle back into my wait, woman comes back with a beaten up brown box and puts me in it. it stank of rabbit, curses! what the hell does she think she is doing? i struggle, i yelp, i scream and i tear the box at the top, side and bottom. but she holds it together with all available parts of the body, while asking people at the bus stop to help flag a cab. not much luck there. a man grunted 'no' and slided away as i put a paw with hooked claws through the box and it stayed there because her hands were full with my nose jamming through the top and my hind leg breaking through the bottom. the box was a shambles, she was a wreck, people stayed away.

finally a man on a crutch hailed her a cab and helped put us in it. 'SPCA', she said. the cab driver sped us there while i yelped up a storm in the box.

at SPCA, the night staff picked me up by the skin behind the neck. excuse me peoples, i am no fresh itsy pussy so its gotta hurt! the woman tells the staff that i am in a bad condition (to put it mildly) and is there anything SPCA can do for me? when it is clear the woman is going to leave me there, he asked the woman to sign a condition of surrender 'on the understanding that it is left to the SPCA's discretion whether the animal/s will be selected for adoption or humanely destroyed'. she started to ask a lot of questions pertaining to 'humanely destroyed' and so she should. 'So how does SPCA decide whether the animal will be selected for adoption or destroyed?' The staff could not say. 'It is the vet's decision.' 'Can I call to check after the vet has seen it before i fully commit the animal?' 'No, signing the form means we have full discretion with regards to the animal.' ' Is there a vet nearby I can consult?' 'Yes, but at this hour, the charges are $250.' '....'

yo, i love the SPCA because it is the only real organisation doing anything about sad sods like me. problem is, there is just way too many of us out there getting lost, abandoned, abused. i would want distance too to stop from breaking down in a blinding defeating rage.

short of taking a filthy cat home with any amount of unknown creepies on it, the woman was out of options. she signed and left and i was brought to a room and placed in a cage alongside other animals. some of them are much worse off than a couple of scabs so i hope my chances aren't all that bad.