Convicts and Cat Ladies

Singapore

Singapore and Australia share one common feature: both were established by convicts. In Australia’s case, mainly petty criminals sent to the antipodes both as a banishment and also to build the new colony. The same happened with Singapore. Indian ‘criminals’ under the Raj were loaded up and transported to Singapore. Most of Singapore’s magnificent colonial buildings were built by these people. The convicts lived in a massive compound where Bras Basah and the Raffles Hotel now stand.

Singapore differs from Australia in one important respect at least: in Singapore, dogs live inside and cats live outside. Every hawker centre, coffee shop, public area, heartland housing blocks: indeed, anywhere, you will find cats. Few are friendly. Many subsist. They shelter in drains. They eke out a living from scraps in the coffee shops, factories and void decks where they can scrounge a little food from someone.

Meanwhile the government takes care of them by slicing off the tips of their ears. Why? To show that they are neutered.

Dogs are taken for walks by maids. (Children are too: in that order). I have even seen them with booties on. Poor puppies. It is not for their protection: it is so that they do not traipse dirty paws over the marble floors when the maid brings them back.

Not so for the poor Singapore cat.

Of course there are people (ladies, mostly) who care for them. There are rescue ladies who scour neighbourhoods and rehabilitate unfortunate moggies who have fallen on hard times: I admire them. What they achieve is amazing. I support them. It is heartwarming to see a poor creature evolve from a skinny, furless bag of suppurating, undernourished bone to a beautiful cat.

Consider Joanna. Go into her condo. At any one time she has anywhere up to twenty cats in cages in the house.

Some — like her and her friends — have multiple cats and their house is spotless. You would not be able to tell there were cats in the flat or the condo. I have also been to houses where there have been one or two cats, and it stinks. Most condos ban cats. Dogs? Noisy. Sometimes dangerous. Fine. I know of someone else who keeps snakes. He has few visitors. He is doing something illegal. Who cares? I wonder.

Cat ladies of all shapes, sises and capacities do an incredible job; but the odds are stacked against them. Someone (I never found out who) poisoned the stray cats around one condo in which I stayed on one visit to the island state. We found five dead kittens one morning: poisoned cat bait. Had I found out who had done it, I would have considered returning the favour.

With so many strays, what happens? Singapore has its Cat Carers a.k.a. Stray Cat Feeders, Crazy Cat Ladies: yes, it must be said, there are some men as well. You see them everywhere: they arrive on appointed times at their own turf. Waiting them can be anywhere upwards of a dozen cats, mostly, it must be said, in good condition. You interfere, and the cats disperse. They are one-person animals: strangers are not welcome. It takes time to earn affection.

This is not to say that all Singapore’s cats are looked after by these Good Samaricats. The city is alive with strays, hiding away from the lights and the action, skulking in drains and sewers, hiding behind the less well maintained buildings that DO exist. Many are in terrible condition. As a walker, I see them a lot. I see precious few homeless people, but believe it or not, they are there. Check under some of the overpasses some time.

And look out for feral dogs: abandoned and roaming in dangerous mobs in places like Pasir Ris Farmlands, Punggol and the bushland of the East Coast Park, to name but a few.

Dogs seem better able to scrounge. Mind you, as a pet tragic, a sick kitten or puppy or an emaciated dog or cat are all the same: would that I could do more.

As is so often the case in Singapore, people deride the work of the cat ladies. They see them as ‘crazy cat ladies’. They look down on them. These women must have mental limitations? In some cases, it could be true. There are hoarders and odd bods; but it misses the point: people who care for abused animals do not have a mental condition. Their home is not dirty. Not all of them have problems with men. Most of them suffer from those all too often rare Singaporean commodities: kindness and care.

Mind you, they are sometimes territorial and jealous: I am not talking about the cats! I passed by a few cats waiting patiently one evening in Telok Kurau. I thought it was strange as a Malay lady came every morning and fed them on 6.45 am. When I returned from my dinner I was surprised to see two Chinese ladies serving dinner for the moggies: the same ones who had Malay food for breakfast.

I paused to chat.

‘I did not realise someone fed them at night as well’, I said with what I hoped was a kindly voice.

One glared at me.

‘What you mean?’ she shouted.

‘Well, a Malay lady feeds them in the morning’.

‘Cannot lah!’ she said and hissed at me.

I imagined a stakeout the following morning: a feline turf war.

And then there are the cat killers: a minority who do not like cats. They go round poisoning them. I have seen it. It makes me cry; but then I weep at the other stupidities of this crazy world of ours. Why care about stray cats when thousands die of starvation or war?

In Singapore, people question the rule that you cannot have a cat in a HDB flat. I love both cats and dogs but given a choice, in a flat, I prefer a cat. It is less noisy. Mind you, they are incompatible with furniture, but you cannot have everything. Owning a cat is just like owning a dog. It's perfectly safe, perfectly normal, and perfectly ok as long as the pet owner is responsible.

People have tried to change the rule; it has not got far, but some are slowly changing. The current law forces cats out into the street since they cannot be house pets.

The result? People think that cats are not healthy and should be avoided. That promotes violence towards strays, because these outcasts are seen as unwanted elements of Singapore's much publicised ‘pristine’ environment.

You can call up the town councils and ask that they be removed and killed. Cats are pests; didn’t you know?

Things are improving, but, until affluent Singaporeans recognise that owning a pet and a child is not one and the same, and accepting that if they do have one or the other, they should look after them, not leave it to the maid, few will care. Some should remove their heads from their rectums and take a look outside ‘Parochia’.

The issue came to a head in 2014 when a controversial artwork seemed to advocate the culling of stray cats. The Singapore Kindness Movement (SKF: there is one) mounted an exhibition at the 2014 Singapore Night Festival in which visitors were shown flyers that appeared to advise them to ‘kill stray cats’.

Naturally, the fur began to fly. The artwork was misinterpreted. The artists responded by saying that they wanted to encourage everyone to spend a little time to reflect upon the issue and the context, before commenting.

In particular, they asked that the cat lovers stop attacking them.

The controversial flyer set up a catfight between animal lovers and the art community. On the cat lover’s side, a spokesperson argued that they found it difficult to understand how the advocacy of such heinous acts could ever be termed art.

The artists explained that the poster was not meant to be viewed in isolation. If that was the case, why were the poster handed out to people? Frustration oozed from the artists. The intention behind the poster (and the others which most did not bother to see) was to show that ‘intentionally distressing and morally questionable messages’, including lying to loved ones and committing adultery raised issues. Art should be about issues.

They cited ‘satirical didactics’. Hello? In Singapore? I had to look that one up. People were encouraged to look beyond the flyers. The artists’ point would have been clear if the public had viewed the exhibition in its entirety, rather than looking at one flyer outside of its context.

Fair enough; but when a poster says: ‘Kill Stray Cats’. Ummm? Where to next? Full marks to the art community for getting behind cruelty to stray animals. The group meowed that they do not advocate or condone the killing of stray cats. On the contrary, they were delighted that the issue of cat abuse had been highlighted.

Faced with the public posturing of the artists, the cat carers backed down. In Singapore, it is far worse being an art Neanderthal than a cat lady. It makes sense.

 Singapore is not known for its wild life: apart from Geylang and Neil Road. It does have monkeys. A few years ago it had twice as many. Why? The long-tailed macaque is the only commonly seen species of monkey in Singapore. In 2014 its population numbered some 1,500 individuals. Most dwelt in and on the fringes of Singapore’s rainforest nature reserves such as in the Bukit Timah and the Central Catchment Nature Reserves. They also occupied parks such as Bukit Batok Nature Park, Yishun Park and Admiralty Park, as well as Sisters Islands and Pulau Ubin.

In 2015 the government, at the request of the well-heeled residents who lived in mansions bordering the monkey’s Bukit Timah habitat, culled the population. Hundreds of monkeys were killed.

Welcome to an advanced society. Got a problem with animals? Kill them. The interesting thing was: there was no outcry.