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 :)
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