Perception and policy are barriers in the fight for animal rights in Singapore
Suffer the little critters
Tan Dawn Wei, Straits Times 21 Jun 09;
When stray cats in Bayshore Park condominium started falling ill nearly two weeks ago from what looked to be a case of mischievous poisoning, cat lovers and animal welfare groups sprang into action.
Residents organised night patrols while the Cat Welfare Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) put up a $2,000 reward for information. Likewise, donations poured in after a pomeranian was found discarded in a plastic bag in East Coast Park two weeks ago.
Animal activism is alive and well in Singapore, but as they say, activism thrives only in the face of inequality. And when it comes to four-legged creatures, they are certainly not man's best friend here, say animal welfare groups.
Cases of abuse have routinely surfaced in the press in the past few years; they hit a record high in March, when the SPCA received 95 reports of abuse. It usually gets between 60 and 80 reports a month.
The Straits Times' Forum pages have seen more complaints about cats and dogs in neighbourhoods, as well as appeals from those who speak up for the animals. This tension between those who have taken up defending animals' rights and those who would rather live without them is not likely to go away.
'I hate it when they poop and pee around my neighbourhood. I wish someone would come and take them away,' said Miss Geraldine Sim, 24, a student who lives in Hougang. Hers is a common refrain that volunteers at the Cat Welfare Society hear. It gets an average of one such complaint a week, and also from those claiming stray cats have scratched their cars.
'I have people sending me pictures of their cars with long, weird scratches. It's not possible a cat did that,' said Ms Ang Li Tin, 28, the society's president.
Such grouses are only the tip of the iceberg for small, volunteer-run animal welfare groups that have stepped up in the past decade to share the SPCA's heavy load.
Not all see eye to eye with the SPCA, which receives the bulk of public donations by virtue of its brand name and charity status.
And they certainly have bones to pick with the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) and Housing Board (HDB) over their pet policies. A few groups have disbanded, but those that have stayed the course are more active than ever.
Two years ago, Action For Singapore Dogs (ASD) started an Adoption and Rescue Centre in Lim Chu Kang when it realised the number of dogs that needed help far exceeded the number of its foster homes.
Today, it is running at a near-capacity of 80 dogs, all waiting to go to good homes. But groups say the issues they have been fighting for have been the same for the past 10 years: advocating sterilisation over culling, getting HDB to relax rules on pet ownership, creating more public awareness, and curbing the breeding and import of pedigrees.
'Even small steps we're trying to take up with the authorities have been rejected,' said Mr Ricky Yeo, 40, the president of ASD, which was started in 2000 and has an annual budget of $250,000. The money comes mostly from donations.
In 2004, Mr Yeo proposed a year-long pilot project to HDB that would allow residents within a few blocks to keep larger dogs. The ASD was willing to manage the blocks, but the proposal was shot down.
HDB does not allow flat-dwellers to keep dogs weighing more than 10kg and over 40cm in height. Cats are banned outright - a sore point among cat lovers, who have also been trying to get the authorities to loosen up.
Given that 80 per cent of the population live in HDB flats, groups have a hard time rehousing the animals they help and containing the large stray population.
It is estimated there are 60,000 feral cats that roam the streets and 5,000 to 8,000 stray dogs.
The state's quick fix is to cull.
Some 5,000 dogs were put down last year via lethal injections delivered by the AVA and SPCA. Cats culled double the number of dogs.
But pro-animal groups' beef with the animal regulator and town councils is not so much that they are putting thousands of cats and dogs to sleep a year, but that they are doing so indiscriminately.
Community cats with tipped ears, a symbol they have been neutered, have also been rounded up.
'It doesn't solve the problem because the cats causing the over-population problem are not the ones that got caught, which are already sterilised,' said Ms Ang. Cat lovers argue that culling only creates a vacuum effect: get rid of the old cats and new cats will move in.
Instead, all the groups advocate a Trap-Neuter-Release-Manage (TNRM) method, a programme that is seen as a more humane and effective alternative to culling.
Cats and dogs are captured, sterilised and returned to their community where they can no longer breed, while stray feeders make sure they do not go hungry. A managed colony will keep the population in check as fertile cats from outside the area will not enter.
In a successful case study by the Nanyang Technological University in 2004, a group of faculty members piloted a method of managing campus cats. Called the Cat Cafe system, it follows the TNRM approach, with seven feeding locations around the university grounds. Since then, the cat population on campus has dropped from an estimated 120 to 80.
Mr Kevin Jones, 51, a computer science lecturer at NTU who expanded the cat cafe concept and wrote a paper about it, said the knee-jerk manner in which the authorities react to public complaints by culling gets his goat. He cited the culling of cats that took place during the 2003 Sars outbreak.
'Without any scientific proof, the authorities acted...to halt their ongoing sterilisation programme and began to cull cats, even those previously sterilised,' he said.
'In the end, the link between Sars and domestic cats was debunked, yet there has never been an accounting for the unnecessary culling, nor has the sterilisation programme been reinstated.'
The AVA stopped its cat sterilisation programme in 2003 after five years as it was still getting 5,000 complaints a year about strays. It also said that the culling of cats had nothing to do with Sars but was an effort to improve public hygiene.
While the AVA is adamant about continuing to impound stray dogs, which it says can pose a threat to public safety, it now says it is again open to subsidising the cost of sterilisation of stray cats, if caregivers, town councils and communities are willing to participate.
This is good news, said MettaCats founder Lee Siew Ying, 56.
'This will save a lot of lives. If AVA makes this programme official again, we will have grounds to fight those who complain and want the cats culled,' she said.
Despite their gripes, groups say strides have been made. AVA has toughened its laws to protect animals and there is a greater awareness of animal welfare issues, although groups question if the state should enforce the rules more.
In the past five years, more individuals and informal groups of animal activists have sprung up on the Internet. Animal welfare student societies have been set up at National University of Singapore, Singapore Management University and NTU.
The trio held an Animal Welfare Symposium in May last year and organised a second one this year.
Said Miss Yeow Hui Qi, president of SMU People for Animal Welfare and a second-year accountancy student: 'We've seen big-scale fund-raising events for the less fortunate people. How about one for the animal shelters?'
But groups say their work will never end - unless there is a change in government policy and more Singaporeans grow a heart for animals.
'We've come to a stage where we're stagnant unless there are policy changes. How can you just keep taking in animals when there is a limit to space and resources?' Mr Yeo pointed out.
Additional reporting by Teo Wan Gek, Huang Huifen and Estelle Low
'It makes me a better person'
Straits Times 21 Jun 09;
Ms Wendy Chui, 36, has been volunteering about once a week at the Action for Singapore Dogs' (ASD) Adoption and Rescue Centre for the past four years. -- ST PHOTO: LAU FOOK KONG
Ms Wendy Chui had her heart broken recently. If only she knew who broke it.
The culprit was someone who laid traps deep in the woods of Lim Chu Kang for a pack of about 10 dogs that she and other dog lovers had been feeding for two years.
She felt that something was amiss when a few of them spotted gashes or fractures on the dogs' legs. Then, all but one disappeared. She was told by residents that they died 'horrible deaths'.
'It's sad, of course, but it also spurs us to think of ways around the problem,' said the 36-year-old administrator at a pharmaceutical company.
'This is life. You can't save every single dog, but you can certainly try, and you learn your lesson and do better next time.'
She managed to rescue the last one, but one of its legs which was caught in a trap may have to go.
When you have seen enough cases of abandoned or abused dogs, you try to focus on the bright side - like seeing these same rescued dogs recover from their ordeal and eventually going to good homes, she said.
'This is what keeps me going,' said Ms Chui, who has been a volunteer with the Action For Singapore Dogs (ASD) for the past four years. She is single and has a dog of her own.
She volunteers at the ASD's Adoption and Rescue Centre in Lim Chu Kang about once a week. She feels it makes her a better person.
She makes no bones about her disdain for those in the anti-animal camp, like animal abusers. 'These people have twisted minds, deep insecurity or an inferior complex, targeting helpless animals who can't fight back,' she said.
Tan Dawn Wei
'I help stray cats end their suffering'
Estelle Low, Straits Times 21 Jun 09;
You can call him a kitty killer and he will not mind.
Retiree Tony Tan Tuan Khoon, 64, makes no bones that he has trapped more than 300 stray cats in his Seletar Hills estate and sent them to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore to be put to sleep.
In fact, he insists that he is being kind. He said research has shown that stray cats usually cannot live for more than five years compared to indoor cats. 'Who's the cruel one? I'm not cruel. I'm helping them to end their suffering.'
In 2002, stray cats had kittens in the space between his roof and ceiling, causing the plywood ceiling boards to give way. He has also had to fumigate his house twice to get rid of the fleas brought in by strays. The cats have also chased his pet rabbit and stolen his food.
Mr Tan got so incensed that he started making his own cat traps - upsized versions of mouse traps.
The former marketing manager in an engineering company said that he has solved 'more than 70 per cent of the problem' since he started trapping the cats.
He spends a lot of his time sending e-mail to government agencies urging them to look into the stray cat issue. He said the authorities must start micro-chipping cats so that owners will shoulder more responsibility. He also wants the HDB to lift the ban on cat ownership.
His work has ignited fury among animal lovers. An online search of his name threw up more than 16,000 search results that link to forums and animal welfare groups that describe him as 'vicious', 'sick' and 'psychotic'.
Netizens also blame him for causing a rise in the number of rats in Orchard Road and Geylang Serai. But he thinks it is time for animal welfare groups to be realistic.
'Who's the vicious one? Is it me or the ones who feed stray cats and let them die a slow, painful death?'
He thinks there are more like-minded people like him but who do not dare speak up 'for fear of a backlash from these vocal, vicious animal supporters'.
Dumped like a piece of trash
Straits Times 21 Jun 09;
Two weeks ago, this pomeranian was stuffed into a plastic bag, dumped near a rubbish bin at East Coast Park and left for dead.
If marketing executive Rayne Gan had not gone fishing near Bedok Jetty with her friends that Friday night, the dog might have gone to the incinerator the next day.
As luck would have it, Ms Gan's friend had brought his pet husky along. It showed intense interest in the red plastic bag.
When she checked, Ms Gan found the tiny dog, motionless and covered in its own pee and poo. When she looked closer, she saw that the dog was still breathing.
The dog's plight riled animal lovers after Ms Gan, 26, wrote to The Straits Times Forum to relate what had happened.
'I only hope that if we bring attention to this, some witnesses may step forward. I hope the owner will regret what he or she has done and that the person will be punished,' she said.
Under the law, anyone found guilty of abandoning an animal can be fined up to $10,000 and jailed for up to a year.
While Ms Gan has had no luck so far in tracking down her new charge's former owner, the malnourished dog - which she has named Pom Pom - is making a good recovery.
Initially unable to walk because of a nerve injury, Pom Pom is now taking wobbly baby steps, thanks to the tender loving care from Ms Gan and her friend, an experienced dog rescuer who is now fostering it.
The two give Pom Pom, who is about seven years old, daily massages and take it swimming at a pet pool in Pasir Ris as therapy.
Donations have also poured in after Ms Gan, who has two dogs of her own, appealed online for pee pads, milk and clothing.
'People have come forward with money too, but we don't wish to take it unless we can't afford Pom Pom's bills any more,' she said.
She has received enquiries from three individuals interested in adopting the dog, but she has not decided who to give Pom Pom to. 'It has to be someone who can commit to the dog and ensure it gets well. It still has a long road to full recovery,' she said.
Tan Dawn Wei
