Stop Trapping Of Community Cats

Tampines Town Council’s Repeated Holocaust of Community Cats Inhumane, Ill-Informed and Autocratic

On 30 September 2014, numerous cages designated to capture community cats were spotted at various areas under the purview of Tampines Town Council.

Cages at Tampines Estate to Capture Community Cats: The logo of Tampines Town Council, as well as a warning “Do Not Touch, Property of Tampines Town Council” was prominently embedded on these cages, indicating that Tampines Town Council is the main agent responsible for their placement. Based on the account of cat feeders, this is not the first attempt the Town Council has attempted to cleanse cat within their purview. Previously, they have deployed tactics such as using big nets to catch community cats, as well as to incentivize cleaners to kill cats through monetary rewards.

Moreover, in November 2005, Tampines Town Council has also stirred controversy through their ill-informed management of community cats. Articles published on various media, highlighting the malpractice are listed, as below:

1) “ No Strays, Please. We are Tampines: Council Should Rethink its Anti-Cat Stance. The Straits Times Forum Online 18 November 2005.

2) “ No Strays = Social Responsibility: Letter from Geraldine Soh Geok Lian” Today Online 18 November 2005. During a visit to the Social Responsibility Carnival organised by the Tampines Town Council on Nov 12, I was taken a back by two posters. There was a gigantic blue check mark on a poster bearing the words "An Estate Where There Is No Strays" (picture), while a "Feeding Stray Cat" poster, which featured a sterilised stray cat eating neatly off a newspaper, was marked with a huge red cross.

Maintaining an estate devoid of cats does not equate with social responsibility. Neither is feeding strays socially irresponsible. As a country with first-world infrastructure, the Town Council's aim of a stray-less Tampines shows Singapore's backward mentality. The anti-cat stance harks back to medieval Europe's prosecution of cats, which were branded as heretical due to their role in "pagan" worship.

3) “ Tampines Town Council Barking up on the Wrong Tree” The Straits Times Online Forum 18 November 2005. DOES the Tampines Town Council understand the meaning of 'Social Responsibility'? Does that mean 'eliminating' anything that causes even the slightest inconvenience? Why not show public toilets that are filthy, irresponsible people that leave food all over the table in food courts, garbage bins that smokers use as ashtrays, spitting, etc? Who is the real animal here?

These correspondences, and the resurgences of initiatives by the Town Council to cleanse community cats indicates that the town council has decided to take things into their own hand, inflamed by a group of cat haters. I personally have been abused by a lady, who claimed that cat feeding is against the law, and threatened to report me to the town council. This is despite me reassuring that I will clean up the area, and showing her the plate I have placed to facilitate cleaning. When I left, I saw her kicking the cat at the stomach, resulting in the cat growling in pain. Moreover, within Tampines New Town, there are frequent cases of cat abuses and the abuse of cat feeders remaining at large, the most prominently one being a teenage from special school, known to have strangled numerous cats to death at Tampines Central Park.

Thus, these initiatives by the Tampines Town Council seem to support the cat haters, and their desire to cleanse the estate of community cats. Given the plight of the community cats, by instinct, cat lovers will naturally want to house them indoor, to shield them from the danger and from being held captive by the Town Council. Unfortunately, areas under Tampines Town Council constitute of mainly HDB flats, and according to HDB, the keeping of stray cats in flats is unlawful.

See Extracts from HDB Website indicating that Cat Feeding is Prohibited.
[ http://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10326p.nsf/w/PetTypesOfPetsAllowed?OpenDocument ].

Given these scenarios, which includes the Town Council’s desire to cleanse and massacre community cats, the HDB’s prevailing regulation prohibiting the keeping of cats indoor, and the cat hater’s abuses of cat feeders, efforts by residents to protect community cats is greatly crippled, and it is disheartening for cat lovers to see the cats they encounter daily, either being held captive by the Town Council, strangled to death by cat abusers such as the special school boy, and to endure abuses by residents using the threat of report to town council, citing that the feeding of cat is illegal regardless of whether the cat feeder clean up.