Thursday, November 02, 2006
Cars and cats again
This topic just keeps coming up over and over. I think one reason is really that in Singapore cars are just so overpriced. If you are overseas, and your brand new car costs $10,000, I think people are a lot less uptight. I know for example, an American friend of mine thinks it's really funny that Singaporeans get so uptight that their bumpers get scratched. He looked at me and said that bumpers were there to be bumped into so your CAR doesn't get damaged. And I am always taken aback with how people back into a space and bump the cars a little to make space for your car when parallel parking.
Here's the thing though - cars do cost a lot of money here and no one likes to see their cars scratched, but why do people always blame the cats? If you see a cat on your car, why do people immediately deduce the cat must be scratching their car? Most people with some knowledge of cats know for example, that cats don't scratch on smooth surfaces. Also, cats have retractable claws and their claws aren't strong enough to scrape off paint in general (just as your fingernails aren't able to). Now I know that this is something that most people with no knowledge of cats don't know, but it's worrying that people are asking for cats to be removed just because the cat is in the vicinity. So the cat who is on the car for a bit of warmth gets hauled off and killed because the owner of the car happens to have noticed a scratch on his or her car. Or maybe not even THAT cat - because it's not as if most people have any idea which cat it is. In fact it's not as if most people even see the cat cause the scratch. Short of sitting there with your eye trained on the car 24 hours a day how can you be sure it was the cat or any cat for that matter? So let's just grab ALL the cats in the carpark to be safe and kill them all, so that we don't have the sliver of a chance that a cat MIGHT be sitting on your car and hence POSSIBLY scratching your car.
But it doesn't work that way.
New cats move in due to the vacuum effect. The car owner is still unhappy. The caregivers get discouraged and wonder why they are trying to keep the population in check through sterilisation and often give up sterilising so in fact now there are more cats then ever before.
It doesn't mean if you're a car owner, there is no solution. Caregivers are always willing to work with you to solve the problem. The cat may be moved away from the area if we know which cat it is. I have bought car covers and given them to people even in cases where there was no proof it WAS the cat. If the car is covered, the cat cannot scratch it. But again, this is too difficult for some people to do, or they don't want people to think they're putting on airs. Either the car means a lot to you (in which case why be embarrassed about it?) so use the cover, or it doesn't because you can't be bothered to use the cover, in which case why are the scratches bothering you so much?
We live in a city. We drive with other cars on the road. There are BOUND to be scratches, scrapes and even dents or bang ups. Last year in an incident which I blogged about, I came back to see a car that had been really badly dented by a van driver who happily drove off even though I am fairly certain he knew what had happened (the police later called me up for my statement because I waited for the car owner to come back and told him what happened).
So what should we do? Ban vans? Ban every car on the road? Ban other drivers? Because that's the only way to ensure that a car is 'safe'.
At the end of the day, it's a car. The minute you drive it out of the showroom, it's already dropping rapidly in value. In a few years, it's just worth scrap metal, if you're lucky. Who are we preserving this car for by ensuring its in pristine condition? For the next owner after you? For the scrap metal yard? To show off to other people?
Things get old. Things get used and they're not shiny or pretty any more. But for a thing to be worth more than a life - that's just sad.
