Monday, May 21, 2012

Anti Strays People - complain without substance

I was approached by a Malay man this morning asking me "Why don't you bring the cat home ?". I was feeding one of the strays around my place.Trying to reason with such people is normally futile as they will continue to heap accusations without any evidence.

Sigh, this is not the first time I have been tackled for feeding strays. They come in all ages, race and gender. I have be approached by elderly Indian man, middle age Chinese woman, ...but this is the first time a Malay has confronted me, as they generally have an affinity to cat due to its association with their Prophet Mohammad.

These folks normally are quite aggressive in their manner. Typically they will utter some of these statements :

-You should not feed the cat (but there is no law against feeding strays)
- Go and feed it at other blocks (shows their selfish mentality)
- The cat dirty the place (just an excuse as they don't have any other reason to give)
- I am complaining to the Town Council about this cat (resorting to threat as they realised their complaint is hollow)

Normally I will be patient and reason with them. I can't bring all these strays back as there are so many of them.  I am not the one that abandon them. It is easy for me to challenge them on cleanliness as I am a responsible feeder. They have never been able to prove that the stray they are complaining about dirty the place. In fact, I think they are lying.

Just like this man, he claimed that the stray 'walk' up to his place to dirty the corridor. I have been feeding this cat for 2 years. He is shy and hang around the car park area, sleeping under parked cars. I have seen him doing his business and burying his discharge in the greens around the car park. I have never seen him walked up the stairs of the HDB block.

I asked the man if he has actually seen the stray dirtying his place. He said no, but he has seen it walking along the corridor. Could it be his neighbour's cat ? He said no when I offer my help to talk to his neighbour. There are a few cats that look like this stray which is black / white.

Frankly, I think he is lying because if this stray did dirty his place, his opening statement to me would be "This cat dirty my place" instead of asking me to bring the cat home. As I was able to answer all his 'accusations', his final words were that  he is calling the Town Council.  The way to deal with such threat is to tell them that the conscience will be on them if the cat is terminated. They know in their heart that the problem lies with them and not with the stray. Such intolerant and lack of compassion only reflect negatively on them.

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