Bye Bye, Birdie Cage, Bye Bye, Sickie Kitts

Beneath this very ethnic-style cover is an old discarded bird cage. For a short while, it sat in the cattery grounds earlier today.

Not any old discarded bird cage, a bird cage holding 5 kittens who cannot be more than 3 weeks old.

Not simply 5 kittens who cannot be more than 3 weeks old but 5 very sick kittens who cannot be more than 3 weeks old.

This is one of the kittens, being carefully cleaned by Foster Mum.

Notice how it is the eyes that Foster Mum is concentrating on.

This is what the poor kitten really looks like (after it’s been cleaned up).

Its eyes are badly infected, and it is the outcome of contracting cat flu which was neglected for a long time. Its left eye may be lost, and its right eye is seriously at risk too.

Another one (also cleaned up).

Its right eye shares the same fate of its sibling’s left eye.

This grey one is worse off, BOTH its eyes are popping out. It is being carefully tended to by Foster Mum’s helper.

While Foster Mum and her helper tend to the poor kittens, another helper lay newspapers in the birdcage to make it more comfortable for the tiny tots, and prevent them from injuring themselves while trying to crawl over the bare cage grilles.

Listless, scared and tired: where is mummy? Why can’t we see?

Ratty cover, as unwanted as the birdcage it covers and the lives entombed

Where did these poor little things come from? What happened to them?

They were discovered by some kind soul in the Commonwealth area. Apparently they were dumped together with their mother. But she was spooked and ran off before the rescuer could get her. Because of the state they were in, the kittens were brought to a vet for consultation immediately. The pet transport guy then brought them over for Foster Mum to have a look.

At once, she mobilised the busy helpers, as the vet did not clean up the kittens’ encrusted eyes as should have been done. It’s something that Foster Mum say, from experience, may help the kittens’ chances of recovering some partial sight at least. If they survive, they might grow up looking like Kobe, healthy and normal except for a cosmetic impairment. However, Foster Mum did not think much of the kittens’ chances of survival. All are very very sick.

Ominously, flies were abuzz all over the kittens, like miniature vultures.

Foster Mum was not able to take the kittens in, but luckily for them, they’ve got a foster waiting for them in another part of Singapore. Arrangements have been made to try to secure the mother.

Aside from the kittens’ painful plight, surely the more pertinent question is: Who did it?

An educated guess from the timing and circumstances of their finding gives a possible answer anyone who has experience with cats and the patterns of dumping would suspect.

Every year it’s the same story.

I am not prejudiced: it is true that whenever major holidays looms, the buildup precipitates both unwanted furniture and unwanted pets in the usual locations, forlorn and resigned to abandonment. While this period is not the only time that pet cats get dumped, it certainly is a period where it is more common to find abandoned cats.

In this day and age where better awareness of animal welfare surely trumps our primitive and cold-hearted treatment of even pet animals 20 years ago, I cannot understand what possess anybody to think they have the right to treat lives like objects, to be discarded at will.

Worse, how can anybody ignore the obvious medical attention required in cases like these kittens’ and to allow their conditions to deteriorate to such a state that their very lives are at risk? And the cheek to simply dump them in an equally unwanted birdcage, considerately draped with a ragged homey remnant. What thoughtful dumpers!

Cruelty to animals happens everywhere.

While cases like the criminal who fed kittens to his pitbulls boggle the mind, are these overt abusers really as monstrous as the “full-faculty” ones who spring-clean their pets out for the new or neglect their pets to the point of death? What is cruelty if not the deliberate neglect of kittens like this, withholding the medical attention that could have prevented this sorry outcome for each and every one of these five little lives?

Even adult cats in much better shape are not spared. Besides these kittens, today in the cattery there was also a new pair of full-grown long-furred brothers who had been found at the foot of a block and brought to the cattery after the Meowsons got in. One of the pair is a ginger and suffering from some skin problem – he’s practically naked from his shoulders onwards, but he’s a lovely boy who really loves people. (The Meowsons themselves were picked up on Tuesday by us tec minions.)

If you have friends or relatives living in the Commonwealth area and you have reason to suspect they owned the bird cage, the ratty cage cover or these kittens, please tell them what’s wrong with their irresponsible, callous and cowardly action. There is nothing honourable, excusable or justifiable about their crime. And make no mistake it is a crime.

May what the dumpers of these kittens allow to befall the kittens be repaid to them 1,000,000 times over experience exactly all that they gave to the kittens. Justice can be no more exquisite than that.