CCTVs, knocking on doors: What else will it take to nab community cat abusers?

In May 2023, the lifeless and bloodied body of a young tuxedo tabby cat named Tuxy was found at the open-air car park next to a public housing block in Hougang.

The gruesome find shocked volunteer feeders in the area who immediately sprang into action to gather information to catch the abuser.

Ms Jasmine Tan, 30, a cat feeder in the area, said “We went door-to-door personally to visit each unit and requested video footage from those with a camera facing the corridors.”

Out of the footage they received was one recording that showed what was believed to be Tuxy being thrown from a height. The group sent this footage to the National Parks Board (NParks), but there had been no news on whether the abuser was nabbed.

CNA TODAY has reached out to NParks to ask about the status of this case. 

While waiting for closure from this incident, more instances of abuse involving community cats have surfaced.

Just earlier this month, in an act described as "appalling cruelty" by Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam, a community cat in Yishun called King Kong was found with its eyes gouged out, among other horrific injuries.

Within days, another cat called Shere Khan was found at a car park in Punggol with severe injuries and both its eye globes were protruding significantly from their sockets. It had to be euthanised later. 

The Animal & Veterinary Service (AVS), a unit under NParks that investigates such cases, said that Shere Khan's injuries were "likely" due to a vehicular accident.

However, animal welfare group Luni Singapore said it stands by its statement that the nature of its injuries "points strongly to deliberate abuse" and it was “one of the most brutal cases” it has encountered.

The group’s founder Nina Astolfi said: “Based on the information available to us, we do not believe this was a road traffic accident. We are concerned that the possibility of a non-accidental injury cannot be ruled out.” 

At the same time, some community cat abuses are being dealt with by the judicial system.

On Friday, a 20-year-old man pleaded guilty to performing an indecent act on a cat after being caught on a neighbour's closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera.

In February, a man was sentenced to 14 months' jail for abusing five cats in Ang Mo Kio, killing two of them by throwing them off public housing blocks between 2019 and 2021. The prosecution is appealing for a higher sentence.

That same month, another man was charged after he allegedly killed a cat and abused four others in Toa Payoh estate in September and October 2024. 

Such news is cold comfort for animal lovers, because the number of abusers brought before the court of law – even though the number has increased through the years – is minuscule compared to the hundreds of cats that have died from alleged abuse. 

NParks investigated an average of about 1,200 cases of alleged animal cruelty and welfare cases yearly from 2017 to 2020, the Ministry of National Development stated in September 2021.

From 2017 to 2021, 40 persons have been sentenced in court and fined, while 23 persons have been sentenced in court and jailed.

In 2024, NParks received around 60 cases of alleged animal cruelty involving community cats specifically, it told CNA TODAY on Friday. Of these cases, evidence of animal cruelty was found for five of these cases upon investigation.

"In those cases, which were substantiated with evidence, enforcement action was taken against the offender, such as issuing a warning letter or a composition fine. For cases that were egregious in nature, offenders were prosecuted in court," NParks said.  

This has led some volunteers to feel despondent, with some telling CNA TODAY that they no longer bother to report to the authorities the unnatural deaths of community cats they encounter because more often than not, it does not lead to the abuser being caught.

“We have been through so many cases ... Each time an exceedingly cruel case happens, there is some media attention and then it proceeds to die down until the next abhorrent case happens,” Ms Tan, Tuxy’s feeder, said. 

CATS FALLING PREY DESPITE VOLUNTEERS’ BEST EFFORTS

Community feeders told CNA TODAY that whenever a suspected abuse case happens, they try to band together to offer assistance to investigators. 

Mrs Nicole Chan, who assisted with the investigations of the 2021 Ang Mo Kio cat slashings where a man slashed 11 cats, as well as the alleged abuse cases in Toa Payoh last year, compiled granular details about the cats in a spreadsheet that she handed to the investigators. 

These details included the date, time and location of when the cats were last found in good health and first found injured.

She also provided the contacts of relevant people such as other feeders of affected cats as further leads.  

The 36-year-old housewife took this initiative because she felt that the investigators might take a longer time to gather such information since “they’re not embedded in the local community".

Ms Amelia Ng, 34, who owns a pet-related business, still recalls the sudden deaths of two black cats in Sembawang. Another regular feeder was making her routine rounds at 2am to feed the cats when she found their still warm, bloodied, lifeless bodies at the void deck of a housing block.

The volunteers believed it was a case of suspected abuse and the pet cremator agreed with this view, based on the nature of the cats’ injuries such as broken legs and no animal-inflicted wounds.

Despite the volunteers sharing whatever information they could gather – including the exact locations of the many CCTV cameras at the block where the cats were found dead – the authorities responded a month later saying that there was insufficient evidence to suggest that an act of animal cruelty had taken place.

Outside official channels, many cat lovers have taken their own steps to address community cat abuse. 

When incidents occur, some feeders physically protect community cats by removing them from the streets.

Mrs Chan recalls how, in response to the 2021 Ang Mo Kio cat slashings, she temporarily put some cats up at a pet boarding facility for three months. 

Such an arrangement, though, is not sustainable given the costs, she said, and some free-roaming cats struggle when they are suddenly placed in a confined space.

“I had to release one cat because she was super stressed when boarding,” she recalled.

To deter culprits from committing further abuse, some residents have begun patrols, such as the Yishun Cat Patrol group that was formed in 2016 after a spate of suspected cat abuse incidents. 

However, these patrols may not always be effective, due to the limited number of volunteers.

Ms Jess Zheng, a retiree in her 60s who volunteers with the group, said that participation rates in such patrols tend to dwindle over time. 

“There will be anger after every killing, but interest dies down. I’ve seen it in the past decade. Participation (in patrols) falls as life takes over,” she added. 

Fostering and getting these felines adopted are more permanent solutions and a recent example includes Kiki, a community cat from the same neighbourhood as King Kong. Kiki has been fostered by a resident in the area after King Kong’s death. 

This is the best approach to keep cats safe but the number of community cats roaming the streets far outweighs the calls to adopt them.

Besides these steps to ensure the immediate safety of community cats, animal lovers have also used their voices to draw attention to unresolved cases and advocate for longer-term changes.

There have been appeals to members of parliament (MPs) and the launch of online petitions highlighting instances of community cat abuse. One such petition has received more than 12,000 signatures in eight months.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) Singapore stressed the importance of such advocacy: “Even if the concerns do not result in visible action, they still matter because they send a signal that people in the community care about animal welfare.”

Associate Professor Alvin See, a law lecturer at the Singapore Management University (SMU), has observed a “noticeable increase” in prosecutions and convictions of animal abusers.

“The willingness to (prosecute) may also be in response to greater scrutiny by the public and MPs,” he said.

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS AND LINK TO MENTAL ILLNESS

Volunteer feeders who spoke to CNA TODAY are of the view that the abuse of community cats is driven by mental health issues or disorders, because they find it hard to believe that a neighbour would otherwise deliberately harm such lovely animals.

Psychiatrists acknowledged that there could be a link between one’s mental condition and some abusive behaviour.

Dr Jacob Rajesh, senior consultant psychiatrist in private practice at Promises Healthcare, said: “In some cases, there could be underlying mental disorders such as major depressive disorder, or adjustment disorders (emotional and behavioural disorders that occur in response to stress and that are short-lived).

“There could be poor impulse control and impairment of rational judgment due to underlying mental health conditions.”

Dr Jacob added that a history of past trauma or displaced emotions could be among many other factors that could drive the act of abuse.

However, the psychiatrists emphasised that not all animal abusers have mental disorders.

Dr Lim Boon Leng, a psychiatrist at Dr BL Lim Centre for Psychological Wellness, said: “In some cases, it may simply reflect deeply ingrained personality traits – such as callousness, moral disengagement or a desire for control.

“In other words, cruelty does not always equal illness. Some people may be fully aware of the harm they are inflicting and they do it out of rage, revenge or sheer enjoyment – not because of a mental disorder, but because of who they are and what they value.”

Cats have consistently made up a large proportion of abuse and cruelty victims in the last five years, SPCA Singapore said.

For instance, of the 453 animal abuse victims that the animal welfare organisation recorded in 2024, 220 were cats.

The statistics do not distinguish between “actual community cats and pet cats abandoned into the community” because the mandatory microchipping for cats was introduced only on Sept 1 last year, it added.

One factor that explains this proportionality is that cats are the most abundant species of community animals in Singapore, given the trap-and-neuter scheme was implemented only in September last year and will take time to have an effect on the population size.  

“The prevalence and proximity of community cats can lead to them being easily accessible targets for people who dislike animals or see cats as an inconvenience,” SPCA Singapore said.

The cat feeders interviewed by CNA TODAY said the cats they fed were the subjects of complaints. Some people have deemed the cats a nuisance, saying they scratch cars, dirty the neighbourhood or enter apartments uninvited. 

The new cat management framework, which took effect last year on Sep 1 and will end its current transition period on Aug 31 next year, includes the mandatory licensing and microchipping of pet cats.

Cat lovers hope that this would increase the traceability and accountability of cats, reducing abandonment and thereby, in the long term, reducing the number of community cats living on the streets and susceptible to potential abuse. 

Mrs Chan said: "We have been sterilising cats for many, many years. If you go to a public housing block and you see young cats, basically 90 per cent of the time, that is due to abandonment.”

Ms Thenuga Vijakumar, the Cat Welfare Society's president, said the effectiveness of the cat management framework in reducing abandonment is not yet clear because there is no penalty framework set out for non-compliant owners.

“The ball is squarely in the AVS’ court on whether the framework will have teeth or not,” she added.

Since community cats are cared for by people, they are vulnerable because they have grown to be “friendly and trusting”, she reckoned.

“They will be at certain places at specific times of the day, making them predictable targets.”

However, Dr Anna Wong, group director for community animal management at AVS, noted that before the trap-neuter-rehome or release-manage programme was extended to cats, a stray cat sterilisation programme was already managed under AVS, offering subsidised sterilisation and microchipping of community cats.

"With the support of our animal welfare group and veterinarian partners, we sterilised and microchipped an average of 4,000 community cats annually since 2020 under (the sterilisation programme)," she added.

"AVS will enhance funding support for the sterilisation and microchipping of community cats and fund additional components such as the trapping and boarding of community cats."

Suspected abuse can be particularly hard to notice even though they happen in housing estates, because they tend to happen in the wee hours of the morning when most people are asleep, the volunteers and animal groups said.

King Kong’s regular feeder, 46-year-old Lismurtini who goes by one name and works at a food stall, recalled that her daughter was the last to see the cat sleeping soundly on the grounds of the housing block, when she returned home around midnight.

Around 6am, a neighbour sent a photograph of King Kong's dead body to the neighbourhood's phone chat group.

CONSISTENT ENFORCEMENT IS NEEDED

Many cat feeders stressed to CNA TODAY that they are hoping to see harsher punishments meted out to deter would-be abusers. 

Yet, the link is not so straightforward, legal experts said.

Assoc Prof See from SMU said that “the courts have discretion over the penalties imposed” even if the maximum punishment is increased.

However, raising the penalty ceiling can signal the government’s “stern stance” against animal abuse to the courts and prosecutors.

Right now though, “on paper”, animal protection laws here are relatively advanced in terms of penalties and scope, he noted.

Ms Bestlyn Loo, a practising lawyer from law firm Providence Law Asia, said: “The key lies not just in raising the ceiling of punishment, but in improving the consistency of enforcement.

“The knowledge that one will be investigated and charged is, in many cases, a more effective deterrent than the length of the sentence alone.”

Ms Loo noted that successfully prosecuting the culprits who abuse community cats remains especially challenging, due to difficulties with identifying suspects and proving their guilt. 

“Perpetrators these days are sophisticated and often find ways to avoid detection, even when there is CCTV footage. Without a suspect, there’s no case to prosecute,” she said.

“Second, even if a suspect is found, it must be proven that the harm was caused by the suspect and not, for example, the result of a road accident.”

Dr Wong said that AVS is reviewing the Animals and Birds Act. Areas under review include the penalty framework for offences to ensure "effective deterrence against animal cruelty and duty of care offences", she added.

Cat feeders expressed their frustration to CNA TODAY that despite the ubiquitous presence of CCTV cameras at the void decks of public housing blocks, it can still be difficult for the authorities to track down suspected abusers.

In 2021, there were already 90,000 police cameras installed islandwide. This number was set to more than double to 200,000 by 2030.

Assoc Prof See said: “Even with an increase in surveillance, determined abusers would try their best to evade being seen when committing the wrongdoing.”

At the end of the day, while they want to see a strengthening of laws and enforcement, some volunteers and animal welfare groups acknowledged that greater public education to improve people’s attitudes towards animals, and an even higher vigilance on the ground, can play a part in tackling the perennial issue of community cat abuse.

In the meantime, though it is not even a month since King Kong’s passing, Ms Lismurtini knows that nabbing a suspected cat abuser – if there is one in the first place – is an uphill battle.

“Even if they cannot catch King Kong’s killer, I hope they can at least still catch the killers for the other cats out there," she said. 

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article attributed comments about the Punggol community cat death to the Cat Welfare Society. The statement was instead from animal welfare group Luni Singapore. We are sorry for the error.