The streets of Tampines are no longer safe for its resident community cats — a pack of around 11 wild dogs has been roaming around the district for months now, hunting down and mauling felines for sport.
The caretakers of the neighborhood felines are no doubt heartbroken over the brutal deaths of over 10 cats and struggling to prevent the dogs from killing again. Even for non-cat lovers, the sight of mangled, bloody animal cadavers would be a distressing sight in residential estates.
As such, members of the Support Tampines Cat Caregivers (STCC) Facebook group have formed a seven-member patrol team to comb their neighbourhood at night to scare off the dogs. But according to a Channel NewsAsia report, the patrolling has taken a tiring toll on the volunteers — they are now limited to doing so on Fridays and weekends. STCC member Rachel suggested short-term solutions such as boarding stray cats in their homes to protect them from harm.
The Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) has been contacted to provide assistance, and the authority assured that it has been working with animal welfare groups and veterinarians to manage the stray dog population in Singapore. Meanwhile, dog welfare groups such as Save Our Street Dogs and Animal Lovers League have been strangely unresponsive to STCC’s attempts to reach out, reported CNA.
Still, the stray dog problem remains an issue. The pack of dogs has grown even bolder now, roaming around Sunplaza Park in the day, unafraid of humans.
“We are asking for action”
Exhausted and stressed by the problem not getting any resolution, Facebook user Nickolas KS Lim posted an emotional open letter to AVA, urging the authorities to fix it. A constituency manager at The People’s Association government ministry, the man lamented that the AVA appears to be not taking the case seriously despite the colossal amount of effort and money being put in by good samaritans.
“To you AVA, this is JUST a case, but to many people, these cats are friends/families. Kids say hi to them, wave to them, sit with them, and hang out with them,” Lim wrote. “Every night you do not take action and give us the answer of ‘We are looking into this matter’ and you tuck yourself into bed in an air-conditioned room, ALL the cats we so happily live with out here are in mortal danger.”
“If you crawl through ALL the photos you probably received, you will know they are just bitten and tossed like ragdolls. There have been sightings of other dogs getting chased by this pack too. When will we do something? When someone’s kid gets attacked? What are we teaching society? That a cat’s life or another dog’s life is worth less than a human? Remember, they have probably done less harm than you and I in our lives.”
He reiterated that what AVA simply needs to do is to remove the alpha dog from the rest of the pack.
“We are not asking for anything unreasonable, we are asking for action, to look for this pack, trap the alpha, separate the pack. We know you have a lot at hand, but surely, making sure that people not feeding pigeons is less important than what we are asking at this moment?”
“Please stop ‘looking into this matter’ and actually do something about it.”
AVA responds
Replying to Lim on Facebook, AVA has promised that action will be taken by way of trapping and rehoming the wild dogs.
“AVA has received feedback on this and conducted inspections around the area. We will be trapping stray dogs in the area under our Trap-Neuter-Release-Manage-Programme. Dogs caught under the programme will be sterilized and the priority is to rehome them.”
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