SINGAPORE – Cat feeders Sharon Tang and Angela Toh drive twice a week to Sungei Kadut in the north of Singapore, with their car boots filled with canned food and kibble.
They have been going to the area – one of Singapore’s oldest industrial estates and home to heavy, timber-related and manufacturing industries – for the last 10 years to feed stray cats.
In recent years, they have noticed the number of cats increasing.
“When I first started doing this, I was also helping the animal welfare groups trap and sterilise the cats before releasing them back. We managed to keep the population down. It has, however, boomed in the recent three to four years,” Ms Tang told The Straits Times.
Ms Tang, 55, and Ms Toh, 53, learnt that some foreign workers have brought cats and kittens from other areas to the dormitories and industrial areas in Sungei Kadut and Tuas.
Cat feeder Angela Toh, 53, brings a bootful of cat food to Sungei Kadut twice a week. She works for her brother in his canteen and a big part of her salary goes into feeding the stray felines.
ST PHOTO: ARIFFIN JAMAR
“I guess they miss their families and children, and these cats become ‘pets’ that they can show affection to,” Ms Toh said.
“Unfortunately, many of the young cats they bring back are unsterilised. Once a pair is released, the cycle of reproduction starts.”
This, she believed, has rendered the nationwide Trap-Neuter-Rehome/Release-Manage (TNRM) programme for cats ineffective.
Under the national programme launched in September 2024, close to 3,000 cats had been trapped, sterilised and vaccinated as at January 2026, and returned to the community.
Veterinarians told ST that cats reproduce “incredibly fast”, with the females becoming sexually mature and fertile as young as five to six months old. An unsterilised feline can produce 12 to 18 kittens annually.
Dr Kenneth Tong, founder and head veterinarian of Animal and Avian Veterinary Clinic, said: “Each litter is around two to four kittens, and the mother can get pregnant again a month after giving birth. The pregnancy period is 63 days.”
