MAY 27

MAY 27, 2003
Cat lovers to the rescue

As AVA steps up culling, one businessman is pledging $2,500 a month to house 300 strays

CAT lovers are now plucking strays off the streets, in an effort to save them from being culled by the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA).

Whether singly or in groups, they are taking the cats themselves, finding homes for them, or paying out of their own pockets to have them lodged safely in farms.

One animal protection group, Animal Lovers League, is hoping to raise $15,000 through pledges to house 2,000 cats on a farm.

Despite these actions and pleas from animal lovers, the AVA has intensified its daily culling of stray cats, even sterilised ones, from 35 before last Friday, to more than 45 now.

While the link between domestic animals and Sars has not been shown, the AVA said yesterday that it is for environmental and public health reasons that town councils are helping to round up stray cats, especially around hawker centres and markets.

The AVA also said it has suspended its cat sterilisation programme, which began in 1998 and used hundreds of volunteers to catch and return strays to their environment after they had been spayed.

The programme, it said, had not succeeded in its aim of creating a neutered, stable stray population.

Instead, it is still getting about 5,000 complaints a year about nuisance strays.

About 10,000 of Singapore's estimated 80,000 stray cats were on the programme.

But cat lovers are not taking things lying down.

One businessman, who declined to be named, is pledging $2,500 a month to house 300 strays at the Ericsson Pet Farm in Pasir Ris.

The farm has already seen 100 new feline additions.

Mrs L. K. Wong, 62, a clinic assistant, has sent 13 strays to a farm, and is willing to spend $1,200 every month to keep them there.

She has 30 cats herself in her condominium in Bukit Timah.

One retiree, Mrs Ram, 62, is thinking of asking her neighbours to take in nine strays in her Housing Board neighbourhood that she and a few others have been looking after.

'When I read about (the cullings), I had many sleepless nights. I was afraid that I would wake up one day and find them gone.' she said.

Not everyone, however, is desperate to save the strays.

Of eight calls to the ST Newsline since Saturday, five have been in favour of the culling programme.

Three other callers were concerned that with the cats gone, the rats would all come out to play.

But the National Environment Agency said it would continue to survey the numbers and is working closely with town councils on how to eradicate the vermin.