To: Today
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 4:40 PM
Subject: Treat your neighbours with respect and courtesy
On the home-page of Yuhua Constituency website (http://www.yuhua.org.sg/ouradviser.htm), Mrs Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State, MND and Education, wrote, “Treat your neighbours with respect and courtesy, like they are part of your family. Treat your community as your extended family, where help can be extended when in need and support given when necessary. No amount of cleaning, upgrading, or repair can make this an endearing home for us unless we treat this as our HOME.”
However we cannot regain this social graciousness of kampong spiritedness if the town council continues to pander to unreasonable complaints.
Being involved in “cat management”, I was put in the loop of an email exchange between a committee member of the Catwelfare Society (www.catwelfare.org) and a town council’s senior property officer (SPO). A resident in a neighbouring precinct complaint about a lady feeding about 6-8 cats every morning and about being disturbed in over 3 mornings by loud howling in the wee hours of the morning. The SPO’s response to the complainant was to cull the unsterilised cats if the “cat nuisance” was not resolved by an email to the catwelfare society.
I happened to know the lady feeding the cat. She lives in the same block as the complainant. She said there were just a few cats, including one free-roaming home-cat from a second storey flat, that were all sterilised except for two newly abandoned cats that she would bring to the vet for sterilisation soon. She was aware of the need to be responsible in feeding by clearing the leftover food. She has not heard any howling from her flat.
This afternoon, I took a walk to the precinct and spoke to an Ah Pek(elderly Chinese man) who was sitting on the concrete stool, enjoying a cigarette and a plate of “Mee Rebus“. I asked if he was disturbed by cats or noise. He said there were just 1 or 2 cats and he said one of cats was from a Malay family on the second storey. He said he has no problems with cats or any howling noise.
I wrote to the SPO suggesting that she asked the complainant to speak to the lady who cares for the community cats. By her effort, the cats are sterilised and hence will not produce more cats. Being sterilised, they will not make noise from caterwauling. The presence of cats keep rodents away (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/nyregion/21cats.html). This dialogue between the complainant and cat care-giver will help to foster neighbourliness by working out a compromise to a communal problem.
The town council has a role to play to achieve Mrs Grace Fu’s vision of a gracious community.
