Cats & Dogs – Page 6 – Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog

Preparing the Cats for Immunization

March 30, 2010 Bradley Farless1 Comment

With my upcoming move, I’m working on getting my cats ready for export. It’s a long and annoying process that’s adding stress to an already stressful situation, but luckily things are working out fairly well for us so far on that front.

First off, some kind people were willing to donate funds towards helping my wife and I cover our expenses. That’s really a great boon, given how much the whole process is going to cost. We’ve pretty much got our plan down as to how to ship them over to the Philippines with minimal impact to our budget. I’m going to create a ‘How-To’ guide on moving cats from Singapore to the Philippines once we manage to get it done successfully ourselves, that way, hopefully, others who are in the same situation won’t have to stress out about visiting multiple sites to figure out what they need to do.

When I take them to a vet to get a health certificate I’ll be getting them their rabies shots, but first I’m going to get them current on their other shots and make sure that they have a shot record that also annotates their receiving dosages of heart worm and de-worming medication. I don’t want any hang-ups when we arrive at NAIA in Manila.

I’m planning on doing that this week, but I ran into an issue. I was short one cat carrier. So, I messaged someone I know in a local cat advocate group called Mettacats, and they were kind enough to give me a loaner. It’s a good thing I asked them about it too, because they let me know that the carriers required on planes are a bit different than the regular type and I would’ve wasted money buying another one. I need to research that some more so I can make sure they’re ‘packaged’ appropriately for transport.

The Mettacats member has a clinic in Pasir Ris that’s close to where I live so I walked up there this afternoon to collect the carrier. She was busy but had left instructions with her staff to get it out of the storeroom for me when I dropped by.

On the way back, I got a lot of interesting reactions. The carrier was empty, but just the prospect of seeing a pet brought smiles to people’s faces. It’s interesting, walking down the street and having kids and adults leaning close to peer into the carrier. Too bad there was nothing interesting to show them, but maybe it’s lucky my cat Thumper wasn’t in there. She looks sort of like a monkey-bat-cat.

Anyhow, I’m looking forward to getting this step in the process out of the way and I’ll update again, with pictures of them suffering at the vet, after the trip!

Singapore’s Native Cat Breed

March 4, 2010 Bradley Farless2 Comments

Meet the Singapura:

CC-BY-SA-2.0; CC-BY-SA-2.5 squeezeweasel

Singapura is the original name of Singapore, and is also the name still used for Singapore in the Malay language.

But… did you know that there’s also a cat breed called the Singapura? This cat breed was discovered here in Singapore in the 70s and originated from cross-breeding between community cats. The cats were exported to the US were the breed was refined, with undesirable traits being bred out until we have the Singapura of today.

At the time, the Singapura became a popular icon for tourists and the Singapore Tourism and Promotion Board (now Singapore Tourism Board) decided to use the cat breed as an iconic Singapore mascot. The name “kucinta” (kucing + cinta) was chosen for the cats after a naming competition and statues of these cats can be found along the Singapore River.

Singapore community cats, or strays, produced a recognized breed of cats that are valued the world over, sometimes pulling upwards of 600 GBP each. When they became popular and could be monetized, they were recognized and made into a mascot to attract tourists.

So… why is it that these days community cats are rounded up by Town Councils and executed at the slightest provocation?

Smart and Contemporary Cat

February 23, 2010 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

Meet the Smart and Contemporary Cat:

This cat used to hang out in the business area in Tampines and he looks sort of like he’s wearing a black suit. We don’t know if he had a name and we didn’t really give him one. We just always called him Smart and Contemporary Cat. My wife would see him on her way to work every day. I saw him myself a few times. He was laying around by the entrance to a parking garage.

He seems to have disappeared. We haven’t seen him lately. Hopefully someone decided to take him home and he wasn’t run over by a car entering or exiting the car park.

Dapper and Thumper Cat Photo Post

February 18, 2010 Bradley Farless5 Comments

Thumper giving a weird look.

For some reason, Dapper was hugging Thumper’s head. She didn’t seem to mind.

A close-up of the head-hugging.

I call this one “pussy sandwich”.

I used that brown bag to pack some stuff for when we went to Kuala Lumpur earlier this month. She saw it on the bed and then took up position half inside it. The expression on her face says, “Hey, I know what’s going on here and I don’t like it.” Cats are smarter than people give them credit for I think. They knew we were going to be gone for a while as soon as we pulled out our big bags and started packing them. They got agitated, ran around a bit and then tried to stay close to us to prevent us from leaving.

Who says cats can’t be affectionate?

Kuala Lumpur Cats

February 13, 2010April 9, 2023 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

These are just some of the cats we saw while we were in Kuala Lumpur.

This is Mr. Jinja. He’s a cat at Hostel Cosmopolitan.

This is Whinny, Mr. Jinja’s friend. She also lives in Hostel Cosmopolitan.

This cat was hanging out in an eating area in Kampung Baru, begging for scraps. I gave it some chicken.

This girl was working at a satay stall we stopped at for a late meal. In fact, we got there just before they were closing. As they started packing up, cats started showing up. I was wondering what was going on until the girl working at the stall pulled out a bag of cat food to feed them. She seemed really excited to see the cats, and she had a good laugh when my wife ran over to watch them and had her photo taken with them.

Mini Marble Is Back In Action

February 6, 2010 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

Mini Marble is back in her territory enjoying life. After going jogging on Thursday night we walked by where she lives and called her name. Right away she ran to us to say hello. We went ahead and gave her a little something to eat, played with her a bit and then went on our way.

It was good to see her back in her usual spot. It was kinda lonely walking through there and not seeing her the past week while she was at the vet getting spayed. It seems like everything went well. They kept her a few extra days to make sure she was ready to play outside again, which was really nice of them.

Cats and Singapore HDBs

February 3, 2010 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

In Singapore, most housing is government subsidized and have been nicknamed HDBs by locals. Since these units are government subsidized housing, there are a lot of rules and regulations regarding them. Those rules extend to pet ownership beyond the laws that already exist in Singapore regarding what types of pets are legal to own. I’ll go into that in another post. For now I just wanted to draw attention to one particular issue.

Cats aren’t allowed to be pets inside HDB housing. Some of the reasons for this is that cats are supposedly noisy and dirty. Really that just boggles my mind. Cats are required to be spayed or neutered in Singapore at around six months of age. If this is done then house cats rarely make any noise at all. The majority of the noise a neutered or spayed cat will make is when it’s confronting another cat in its territory. That’s not likely to happen inside of a home, is it? Unless you’re just in the habit of letting random cats come in and out at their leisure. Dogs, which are allowed in HDBs, will often bark very VERY loudly for little to no reason at any given hour of the day or night. Also, cats are not dirty. Well, not any dirtier than dogs anyway.

It all comes down to responsible pet ownership. Bathing your cat and cleaning its litterbox regularly are just something that a person should do, and if it’s being done the house won’t be any dirtier than a house without cats, or a house with a dog. In fact, cats always use a litterbox. Dogs on the other will crap and pee all over the floor if not let out and that will sit there all day if no one is home. To me, a pile of crap on the floor, with a breeze blowing the odor to other homes, is a lot filthier than a covered litterbox. That’s just me though.

This weird obsession with cat persecution extends to outside of the HDBs as well. One complaint is that cats rifle through garbage and make a mess. I don’t see how. The HDBs use a garbage chute system, where the garbage winds up behind a locked door on the ground floor for collection. There are a few regular trash cans under the buildings but they rarely have food waste thrown into them to start with, and I’ve never seen a cat in or even near one. I suppose part of that is that even outdoor cats in Singapore are well cared for by people in the community.

The animals that do make a mess of the ground floor of HDB estates are actually people. It’s insane how disrespectful and prone to littering people are here lately. When I first moved to Singapore it was usually spotless, but over the last year and a half or so it’s been getting progressively worse. I’ve posted a photo of the mess people typically leave behind before. It’s usually kids and young people doing it, but even still you have to wonder what their parents are teaching them that make them feel it’s ok to make this sort of mess. There are very poorly paid foreign workers that go through the HDB estates every night, cleaning the areas, but is that an excuse to simply toss your garbage on the ground? Especially when you’re right next to a trash can?

Anyway, what made me think about all this is that I was downstairs and saw this disaster below where I live:

It’s like this on a nightly basis, and usually worse. I’m pretty sure it’s not cats that are doing it. The difference here is that this goes unremarked, while cats are rounded up and killed at the slightest provocation.

It seems to me that the HDB rules need to be revised to allow cats into the buildings. There’s no logical reason why they shouldn’t be there. And instead of fixating on rounding up and routinely killing cats, they should focus on rounding up and routinely fining people that are actually ruining the cleanliness of HDB estates.

There are groups here in Singapore, like Cat Welfare Society, that regularly take the time to try to educate people and Town Councils about real cat behavior and that’s great. I, like other bloggers who like cats, am just doing my part in pointing out an ongoing issue.

My Cat Ripped A Lizard’s Tail Off

January 27, 2010 Bradley Farless12 Comments

This is the first time I’ve ever seen this actually happen in person so it was pretty neat for me.

I was sitting on my bed, playing with my cat when she leapt off and ran towards the door. I looked to see what she was doing and she was chasing a small lizard around the room. Next thing I know, she’s swatting at a flopping, pale looking thing on the floor. I took it away from her and it turns out it was the lizard’s tail.

The tail kept flopping around on its own for about five minutes. It was kinda creepy.

The lizard itself hid in a corner. I grabbed it with some tissue and put it outside. It’s probably too traumatized to come back in the house so I’m sure that’s where it wanted to be anyway.

Mini Marble Is Getting Spayed

January 25, 2010 Bradley Farless5 Comments

This is a much later image of (not so) Mini Marble, from March 2012. The original file was lost when Posterous shut down its service.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever posted photos of Mini Marble here but she was picked up tonight to be taken for spaying.

You see, Mini Marble is a stray cat, a community cat, here in Pasir Ris. She’s a small kitten of about 7 months and we see her every day as we walk from the MRT station back to our place.

We first noticed her a few weeks ago and she won us over with her playful attitude. She also helped us to make some new friends. So, we carry a small amount of kibble with us to give to her to make sure she stays fed.

Mini Marble’s sterilization will be paid for through donations. It’s dangerous for unsterilized cats to wander around housing estates in Singapore. When they go into heat they may become noisy which often provoked uncompassionate residents into filing complaints. I say uncompassionate because the resulting ‘solution’ is that the cat or cats are often rounded up and sent of to be killed.

So, this is a good thig for her. It’ll help keep her out of the crosshairs of idiots and overzealous estate managers.

She’ll be laid up at the vet for a week and she’ll then be taken back to her usual territory. Hopefully everything goes well for her.

Posted via web from Bradley’s Posterous

When Dogs Go Wild: A Singapore Misadventure

January 12, 2010 Bradley Farless9 Comments

The afternoon was pretty much like any other. I was getting ready to go out to dinner when I realized that I needed to wash a load of laundry. So, I went down to the laundry area with my basket, sorted the clothes into piles, put in a load and started it up. When I turned around to put everything else back into the basket I noticed the dog trying to chew on a piece of my wife’s clothing.

So, this is where things got a bit ugly. It was a bit shocking too, since it was so unexpected and happened so fast. I picked up the end that was sticking out of his mouth and gave it a little tug, but he wasn’t letting go. I told him, “Let go!” and gave another little tug. Then he growled and before I realized what was going on, the dog had let go and had clamped down on my arm. I yelled, partially in pain and partially in surprise and gave a yank to get free of him. His bite was brutally hard and as I got my arm free I gave him a good solid whack to get him away from me.

Then I was looking down at my disaster of an arm. If you look closely you can see the imprints of his teeth towards the left of the obviously broken skin.

The maid rushed out and quickly hustled the dog into its kennel and then looked at my arm. She insisted that I should go see a doctor and called the homeowner. After hearing what happened, the homeowner also insisted I go. I was a bit reluctant, and my stomach had been growling just previous to this incident, so I washed the wound and put some alcohol on it and got something to eat while waiting to hear from my wife. After my wife heard what happened she told me to stop being hardheaded and just see the doctor. So… I complied.

The polyclinic in Pasir Ris near our place was closed, as it was about 6 PM, so my wife suggested we meet in Tampines and go to a polyclinic there. Unfortunately I wasn’t paying much attention and got on the right bus, but going in the wrong direction. I hopped on the 81 all ready to go and then after about 20 minutes I realized I was in Serangoon instead of Tampines.

After switching buses and getting a good seat on the upper deck of the 72 heading to Tampines Interchange my iPhone unexpectedly gave me the finger. Without the usual 20% battery warning it simply shut itself down and told me to plug it in when I tried to restart it. I could’ve sworn that thing had read at 80% battery before I left the house. Just not my day. I felt a bit naked without access to my iPhone and it made it worse that I was holding it in my hand but couldn’t do anything with it. I considered asking a girl using her laptop if I could plug my phone in, but that would have been a bit ridiculous. Not to mention I didn’t have the USB cable with me anyway. Oh iPhone, you’ve spoiled me.

Luckily my wife was waiting right where the bus dropped me off at the interchange, so I didn’t have to spend a lot of time wandering around looking for her in our typical meeting spots. We made our way to the clinic that’s just across the street from Tampines 1. It’s called Healthway Tampines Central Clinic. If any of you guys ever get hurt and you’re in the Tampines area, I really recommend this place. The staff was all very courteous and warm, especially the doctor, Dr. Vivien Ang. She made the process a lot more pleasant than it could have been.

I wound up getting the wound cleaned and bandaged.

Then I got jabbed with a tetanus shot. Hadn’t had one of those in a while! I also got some Curam 625 mg antibiotics that look like horse pills. The things are massive. I thought I was going to gag on the first one. I’ll have to start breaking them in half. I also got some Bactroban mupirocin, which is antibiotic cream.

I was kinda worried about rabies, but the dog is a house dog, not a stray, and looks healthy enough. I also found out that rabies has been wiped out in Singapore. The last case was in 1953, before Singapore was even an independent country. That’s a relief! Oh, and just as an odd coincidence, that last case of rabies was a human case involving a Caucasian man.

One positive thing I can take away from this is that Singapore’s health care system is very affordable, at the polyclinic level at least. I have no experience with Singapore’s major hospitals, but my bill was small. Very small. Especially when I think about how much the same care would’ve cost me in the US. We’re talking a difference of hundreds of dollars here. Most of that would’ve been taxes and surcharges and inflated medication prices. I know this is off-topic, but I hope that whatever Obama’s doing gets the healthcare industry under control in the US. If it’s possible to have cheap, quality healthcare in Singapore the same should be true of the US.

This also gave me a deeper appreciation for my cats. They may be snotty sometimes, or aloof, but they’re also very affectionate, very cute, and they don’t try to gnaw my arm off!

I never was much of a dog person to begin with, though there are some small ones I don’t mind, like the one I saw in Thailand, but now I suppose I like them even less. I know it’s not right to judge all dogs based on the actions of one dog, but I suppose this last photo can kinda sum up my feelings towards dogs right now: