Monthly Adoption Drive is here!

The monthly adoption drive organized by Pet Lovers Center & Cat Welfare Society is here again! The next drive will be 3rd June @ VivoCity starting from 3pm - 8pm. If you are keen on adopting an awesome pet, don't miss this! I believe that there are many people that will say "Oh, i will prefer to adopt a dog instead as dogs are more loyal, fun and can train them."  Let me tell you this, having a cat is one of the most awesome experience I've ever had. From young, I always wanted a dog and
I had 2 of them:

1 is given by a total stranger I met at a playground when I was in Primary 3. This stranger just approach me and ask if I would like to adopt her dog. I forgot the breed but as a kid who always like dogs, I did not think much and brought it home. You can imagine the face of my mum when I brought it home that faithful day. So my mum being so kind, told me that she will allow us to keep the dog if we promise to take care of it. Clean it's poo and pee, bring it out for a walk, feed it, bathe it etc... So I happily agreed to the T&C. But guess what, after about a month or 2, I began to have 2nd thoughts. As I do not know how to train the dog, it pees & poos all over my house. And at the last straw, my mum could not take it and decided to give it up for adoption. I was so sad that day that the dog was taken away.  :(

And the 2nd dog was actually helping my cousin to take care of him for her friend. I was in secondary school then and my cousin asked if i can help to look after this dog for a few week for her friend. I still remember that it is a mongrel and it was limping when it walks. So excitedly, I agreed to help to look after him. This dog will follows me where ever i go.. even to the toilet, he will sit outside and wait for me. When I sleep, he will wants to sleep beside my bed. At that point of time, I felt that my privacy has been intruded >.< .... So after 1 week, i cannot really take it and ask my cousin to bring him back :( ... looking back, I wish I would have kept that dog instead.Seriously, I think her friend did not really took care of the dog and intend to abandon him. Because when I ask my cousin to take back the dog, the owner was not very willing.

Ok, so my childhood is all about encounters with dogs. Never have i thought that i would own a cat someday. The decision to get a cat is when my mum retires and i feel that having a pet for her will help to keep her company at home when we are not around. So, the 1st cat came into my life and my mum named her "Mimi". Mimi was given by my friend as his cat gave birth to a litter. She had brown, white and black fur, a turquoises cat as many will call. Sadly, she fell to her death when she ran outside of the house and fell through a hole at the corridor. That experience was scary.. I still remember that faithful night. I was devastated :(. After a few month of setting down, we decided to adopt another. This time is a stray rescued by one of the rescuer. It is also turquoises in color and my mum named her "Sweetie". Don't ask me why their names are so.. uhm.. So, sweety came into our lives. My mum thinks that she will be lonely, so my brother decided to get a cat to accompany her. So, they went to a pet shop this time and get a Rag doll, and we name him "xiao bai". And so, they mate and had a litter of kittens. She gave birth to a full brown cat (no pics), a black & brown cat (named: Kelly) & a trio color cat (named: bao bei). I gave the brown cat up for adoption as they are too many for us.

So ever since these cats came into my life.. my perspective of cats had changed. Out of all these cats, xiao bai is the closest to me. After i move out of my mum's place, i decided to bring him with me and left the rest with my mum. So now xiao bai being alone, i decided to adopt another one to accompany him. And i went to one of the adoption drive organize by them last sept and i adopted a black & white cat (named: Mika)

I adopted her at the NEX mall adoption drive. :) And she turns out to be such a sweety and gets along real well with xiao bai.

Everyday i go home knowing that they will wait at the door for me and upon seeing me, they will "bare" their belly to me for a tummy rub. And studies shown that stroking a cat will help to reduce stress and anxiety. How not to have such awesome pets to bring joy into your life? Do consider to adopt one if you can and i'm sure they will return you with lots of loves and joy unconditionally. :)

Feeding the strays

Was just walking around my estate last Saturday and saw quite a number of stray cats around. Some are quite well-fed and some look like they've just came out of the washing machine.. (in quite a bad shape, fur looks really messy)..

While walking towards my block, we chance upon this stray that looks real pretty. It has white and grey fur, too bad I didn't capture a photo. It looks rather well-fed and friendly, walking up to us and meow (aww...) Since its so friendly & looks so cute, we decided to feed it. I quickly went up to take the cat food and also clean water. The stray quickly came over and eat happily.

While waiting for it to finish the food so we can clean it up, I suddenly thought of an idea.. An idea that will allow feeding of the strays without dirtying the environment. You might have heard of recent news about some residents complaining about how cat feeders dirtying their surroundings. While feeding strays is a kind act, but feeders should always clean up after that. So people will have nothing to complain about and therefore, there is no need to remove the strays. Its a win-win situation. But most of the feeders that i see around my estate are old folks and most of the don't comply to cleaning up after feeding. So naturally, people tend to complain to town council on how dirty their environment is due to this. Not to put blame on anyone, but i think educating those stray-feeders are indeed needed. So here is my idea...

I'm just thinking, if we can have some feeding stations build for strays. Like those automatic food dispenser, we can build these dispenser around the estate and those strays can actually press to dispense food. And you think that cats might not be that intelligent to dispense food by themselves, you are totally wrong. You know how easy it is to train a cat to go to its litter box to do business? It works the same way! Cats only need a few repetition to get them learn a particular tasks. There was once a black stray cat that will faithfully turn up at my mum's place and wait for her to feed him. Nobody taught him how to go to my mum's place, he just happen to come to our corridor and my mum just feed him seeing that he's a stray and vola! He turns up everyday at the same time waiting for food. And also look at those strays who will faithfully waits for their feeder at a specific place at a specific time.

There are already some food dispenser selling in the market now, eg:

So how it works will be something like this:
- Customize food dispensers for stray cats around those estates with lots of strays
- These food dispensers will be build at designated area/locations as specified by either town council, cats welfare or residents suggestions etc..
- It will dispense food by having the cat pressing down a lever (you know those dustbins that you use your feet to tap and open?) It will work similarly.
- It will only dispense a little food at a time so that there will not be left over food that will invite unnecessary ants, cockroaches etc... If the cat is hungry, it can always tap to release more food
- It must be vandal proof (meaning - not easily being vandalize by public)
- Refill of food must only be done by authorized personnel. This is to prevent people from throwing unwanted rubbish into the dispensers
- And of course... to train the cats to go there to dispense food when they are hungry :)

This solution will not only solves the issue of "littering" as classified by the "angry" public about not cleaning up after feeding, and also it will solve the issue of hungry strays over-turning the rubbish bins to look for food.

So, whoever is reading this and feels that this is a good feeding solutions for our strays, leave a comment & we can discuss more hopefully :)

Cat litter comparison

Having used different cat litter throughout the years, I decided to made a comparison among some of those that I've been using.

1) Litter star cat litter - They are made of Silica gel that helps to absorbs humidity and odors. It is also a green product as it is pollution free and an it's anti-bacterial chemicals in it will prevent germ growth. And most importantly, it does not leave any dirty paws on your cat. :) Different brands also comes with different smell. I've got one that smells like floral now.

2) Pee Wee cat litter - This litter is made of pine wood. When in contact with your cat's pee, it will breakdown into sawdust and therefore absorbs the smell. The only smell you will get is the wood scent. I quite like this litter initially as it is rather clean and keeps the litter box dry. But later i start to see sawdust all around my house as they tend to get stick to my cat's paw and when they ran around the house, they left paw prints of sawdust all around my house. :(

They also have a PEEWEE Litter Tray System you can get if you would opt to use this type of litter. Basically the litter tray has 2 section: The upper part has a grating in the bottom, you put the PEEWEE litter on this grating. When your cat pees, 90% of the urine passes through the grating and falling to the lower section of the tray. The rest of the urine will be absorbs by the litter which will then breakdown into sawdust. Once your cat finish its pee-ing, they will tend to scratch and this action will help the sawdust to fall through the grating to the lower section. Your only work here is to throw away the sawdust on the lower section. So if you would like to use this litter, it would be good to get their litter tray as well. If not, you can DIY the tray yourself. Maybe by putting mesh-wire on your current cat litter box??

3) Breeder Celect Cat Litter - This product is made of recycled paper (talks about being Green yea..) It's made by a paper recycling company from Australia, Breeder Celect is made entirely from recycled paper with absolutely no chemicals added. It works same as the PEEWEE as it will breakdown once urine touches it. One good thing is this can be throw into your toilet bowl and you can just flash it away. The cons will be, it tends to make the cat's paw black. I think its because of its recycled material, after your cat pees, it will tend to scratch the litter box and in turn causes the paws to stick to some of this litter. Other than that, this litter works fine and you can just flash it down the toilet bowl. Talking about convenience.

So, these are some of the litter products that i've used and been using them. You can try it out if you think it fits you & your cat needs.

How about training your cat to use the toilet bowl instead? It will be fuss free and you can save all those hassle of trials and errors of different cat litter. :)