Cats and dogs in Singapore

Why cull a dog that has been sterilised??
Letter from Jill Hum, Today Online 15 Aug 08;

I REFER to “Microchipping helps AVA in management of strays” (Aug 11).

The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said that it culls stray dogs “to manage the population which poses a risk to transmission of rabies should this be introduced into Singapore” .

Surely there must be a better and less drastic method to combat the threat of rabies than culling?

Anecdotal evidence has shown that sterilisation and not culling is the mosteffective way to manage the stray population, so why the insistence on culling?

The AVA also said that “even strays which have been sterilised should be properly licensed and homed and not be returned to the environment”.

While I agree with this, I hope theAVA also realises that it is impossible tofind homes for all sterilised strays. There are just too many of them. In the meantime, there is no choice but to return those that cannot be rehomed to their original environment.

Animal welfare organisations take the time, trouble and money to sterilise strays to control the population. To cull even sterilised strays is like saying that these strays do not have the right to live.

I urge the AVA to adopt a more compassionate and enlightened approach towards the management of these strays.


Einstein = manja* cats, too
Compassion toward all animals is the enlightened way to live, he argued

Dr Tan Chek Wee, Today Online 15 Aug 08;

SINCE my involvement in “cat management” in my neighbourhood, — I help trap cats in the estate, send them to the vet for neutering, then release them back into the area, and also help the Town Council to manage complaints — I have begun to empathise with the Town Council officer who has to handle a fair number of unreasonable and demanding complainants.

Recently the officer in charge of my precinct wrote to me about a resident who emailed about the presence of a black cat in the vicinity of her block.

On the Cat Welfare Society’s unofficial blog (catwelfaresg.wordpress.com), an entry dated Aug 4 talks of “a complainant who complained about fleas on her car, about cats scaring kids and pet dogs (which is rarely the case)”.

Unless the complainant’s car has a circulatory system and is covered with skin and hair, there is no reason for fleas to be on it!

I have seen children, sometimesaccompanied by their parents, shouting, throwing stones and paper aeroplanesat neighbourhood cats. I could see that the cats were really scared of the kids. I have also seen pet dogs chasing cats, while their owners watch, laughing.

Yet I wonder: Were there no cat “managers” to help counter such complaints, would the cats be rounded up for culling? How many cats have been killed following such unreasonable feedback?

At the end of the day, the issue is not about cats but our lack of graciousness and compassion.

Albert Einstein, in 1930, called our inability to sense how others think and feel “a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us”.

Our task, he continued, “must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty”.

Let’s live and let live. I think we will regret it when the day comes when there is just one species left on earth — Homo Sapiens!

Now, isn’t that a scary thought?

The writer is a primary health physician who is also actively involved in the care of the elderly in the community.