A Memoir For Whiskas

Whiskas, an Ang Mo Kio cat, arrived at Love Kuching on 13 June and passed away on 25 June. We didn't have time to write a post about him before he left us, so here is a memoir for him.

He was emaciated and has skin problems and fur loss. We brought him to the vet. It turns out he was having the flu', but a serious one, because he was FeLV positive. There was blood in his mucus and wheezing in his respiratory tract. His skin problem was an opportunistic bacterial infection due to his FeLV.

Our vet almost never says euthanasia at the start. But for Whiskas she was certain it would be much sooner than later. Nonetheless, we gave him last-ditch treatment: an antibiotics shot, fluids.

We bathed Whiskas with antibacterial shampoo often during his stay here, and he felt so much better after each bath, feeling clean. He even purred after one session of bathing. We gave him a humidifier to help him clear his nasal tract. We added antibiotics for flu' into his food, and he actually ate! He ate happily every day. He especially enjoyed Taste of the Wild dry food and canned food with gravy. He would meow if he was hungry.

This was the status quo, and then suddenly, one day after eating happily and meowing at us, he suddenly collapsed and couldnt breathe. His lungs had fluid, we injected a diuretic, gave him CPR. Eventually his lungs cleared a little, and he started to not need to breathe with an open mouth (open mouth breathing in a cat is a very serious symptom), and his heart rate also came up to a more normal level. But it was still too late, we lost him. He died with his mouth closed, at least, not gasping for air at the last moment. That was our respite.

Thank you Whiskas for being happy while you were here with us. At least we know that you enjoyed your last days.

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Our Emergency Response Fund #ERfund

Photo credits: Kevin Lee, Cake Images

Our Emergency Rescue Fund or ER Fund was created to help caregivers, rescuers who have no money to pay for veterinary bills, but come across a sick or injured cat that needs help.

Background of the ER Fund:
At present in Singapore's cat rescue circle, the only possible ways for rescuers to foot the bill at vet clinics, is to pay first, and then raise funds later, be it through independent means online, or through Cat Welfare Society's Special Appeals.

But what happens if you cannot pay first -at all- to begin with?

Here is where our ER Fund comes in.

Through the generous support of our donors, we have funds already there for a financially incapable cat rescuer who contacts us. This way, these rescuers need not go into huge debts, owe the vet clinics money, or skip essential veterinary procedures because of the costs. The cat will then receive the care it needs at the clinic from the very beginning.


How the ER Fund works:

This infographic lays out how the ER Fund works and how, if you are financial unable to rescue a stray, can apply for the ER Fund.

To prevent any misuse of the funds, we have placed a few terms and conditions required to apply for the ER Fund:

Love Kuching Project Emergency Response Fund Terms and Conditions

 

1.    Love Kuching Project reserves the right to terminate a relationship with a rescuer.

2.    All veterinary consultations have to be made at The Animal Clinic Telok Kurau, 55 Lorong L Telok Kurau, #01-63 Bright Centre, Singapore 425500, during operating hours [Monday to Friday (9:30am to 12:00pm, 2:00pm to 5:00pm, 6:00pm to 8:30pm), Saturday (9:00am to 1:00pm, 2:00pm to 5:00pm), Sunday (Closed)]. 

3.    No off hour consultations are allowed.

4.    When the Love Kuching Project Emergency Rescue Fund is at or below $500, cases will be triaged (i.e. when immediate intervention will make a life/death difference to the cat rescued).

5.    The ER Fund can only be applied once per cat. Subsequent visits to the vet for the same cat will not be funded by the ER Fund except when the cat is reviewed for the same condition for the second time. 

6.    Love Kuching Project reserves the right to terminate funding for a cat's subsequent visits to the vet for the same condition.

7.    Each rescuer who utilises the ER Fund or the Foster Network must register as a rescuer under our database.

8.    All cats must have a foster caregiver before we can initiate the rescue process.

9.    A Love Kuching Project representative must be present during the cat’s veterinary consultation.

10.  A Love Kuching Project representative must be present when Love Kuching Project administers the Emergency Rescue Fund

11.  Love Kuching Project will be the sole decision maker allowing or declining any veterinary procedure, under advisement of the vets at The Animal Clinic.

Contact person for ER Fund application: 

Email: assist@lovekuchingproject.org .

Donate to our cause by making a deposit to our POSB savings account 188-52652-7.     


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New Corporate Bank Account Coming Soon! Why Do We Need One? Find Out Here:

If all goes well with ROS and DBS, we will be opening our corporate Love Kuching Project bank account this Saturday.

We need a corporate account for better financial governance, to further assure cat-angels that donations are even better controlled.

While we already are aboveboard with our accounts, we want to be even more financially compliant, and a corporate account will tighten this compliance and help with our fundraising.

As of now, our cash in bank is $3,556.45. Minimum sum opening deposit is $3,000. We are delaying as many ongoing expenses we can to make sure the old account POSB savings 188-52652-7 does not zeroise and close because this current sum of $3,556.45 is cutting it very close.

We will announce our new corporate account details when it's done, and the current one will remain as there are many standing instruction donations into the POSB account. We will manage both accounts until all monthly donors are able to switch to the new account with the new details, which we will announce on our blog.

Our answer to this morning's triage question! Triage, triage, and triage again, always.

Early this morning we posted this question and asked all of you to answer:

This is a question of triage, and triage principles apply to all of our rescue-related work at LKP. We promised we will share our answer, so here it is.

The cat with the bite wound will not die if it is not tended to immediately. The cat that fell from a height and has blood in the nose, is likely to have internal injuries, and will most likely die even if you help it. (Hence remember your window safety!) The cat with the breathing problem is the first one we will attend to immediately. After oxygen mask is placed, the lungs and heart should be listened to via stethoscope. If there is fluid in the respiratory system, diuretics and/or steroids can be injected.

Of course, we are not vets, so this scenario will not happen in our foster home often.

But triage applies to other aspects of rescue work. Supposing we receive 3 requests at the same time for fostering of kittens, but we can only take in one, not all. Which one will we take in?

If the kitten is more than 3 months of age, it is most likely already independent and can survive on the streets (assume no illness). It should not be rescued also because after the 3-month age marker, adopters lose interest. LKP taking in this case will cause the cat to be a shelter cat for a very long time.

If the kitten is sick or orphaned/abandoned without a mother but not yet able to eat on own (i.e. needs a mother cat's milk), this case is more critical than the one above because with human intervention the kitten will have a chance at recovering and surviving.

However, if the rescuer is able to foster the kitten in the above scenario and with our guidance place it for adoption, we will not take in the case. We only take in kittens that have no fostering options left. We shall then be the last resort.

In our sterilisation work, we do the same: we only do TNR projects that have large populations of cats that a regular cat feeder cannot afford to neuter all, or there is no one who is neutering the colony. Small cases such as, say 3 cats, we will advise the enquirer to neuter the cats themselves and guide them how to go about it. This is because such cases are very affordable, and if we take them on, we are diverting our attention from the large colony cases that are not neutered.

Similarly, in our work for sick and injured cats, if the cat can be medicated on the streets by the caregiver, we will not take in such cases. If the cat has to be hospitalised for basic reasons such as daily subcutaneous fluids, then we can take in this case, and when the cat recovers, return it to its street territory. If the cat absolutely cannot go back to the street and must have long term intensive care to survive and live a comfortable, emotionally beneficial life, then we will take this case in as well. However, it still all depends on whether we have space as we can only take in 5 sick/injured cats at a time, i.e. maximum threshold rule still applies.

Hope you have gained some insight into how we take on cases and projects!

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Becky from Punggol with pancreatitis | The full story

Becky arrived at our foster home on Sunday 8 June at night. Here is her back story.

Becky's cat caregiver fell ill with tuberculosis and got hospitalised. Before that, when he was ill, Becky got stressed out, missing her Uncle, and stopped eating for a few days.

When she arrived that night at our foster home, we bathed her, and realised that she felt pain in her lower abdominal area. We brought her to the vet the next day relayed that to the vet. Based on blood tests, her not wanting to eat and the lower abdominal pain, we decided to treat her for pancreatitis, which is antibiotics, steroids, painkillers.

Becky in her cat suite

She however does not like indoor life. She meows the entire day (and night). She is also very fussy about her food. But she has been eating, sometimes even when supplements are added, and did not need a top up of steroidal painkillers after her first dose. Her antibiotics injection, lasts for 2 weeks, after that we need to see if she is back to 100% and eating. In the meantime, if she experiences pain again, we will put her on pain and steroid medication.

Very affectionate

She is actually a very affectionate cat, who really misses her Uncle. However, due to Uncle's condition, when she gets well, Uncle may not be able to feed her and he also wants her off the streets because where she is has a lot of construction work. Her rescuer Ed, and the Uncle, will be placing her in long-term boarding care after she recovers with us here.

Look out for her updates on our social media. We love getting cats well <3 .="" br="">

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Appeal for corporate partners

Are you in the CSR industry or profession? Looking for a worthy cause that can give mileage to your organisation or client?

We might be the one, and we hope you think so too.

Sure, we re small - less than 30 volunteers-strong, have a small cat fostering capacity of maximum 17, have KPIs that are more like seedlings than blue-chips. But, if you want to look for something special, we are it.

We believe a lot in cat rescue and adoption for sure, those are 2 of our main objectives. But our mission, loving the cats in our lives and neighbourhoods, takes us further than kitten fostering and rehoming. We do much more than that, and fall short only of our mother-cat Cat Welfare Society - we do not engage in advocacy work involving government-level intervention, education in schools, or mediation with the Town Council complainants. We know our mother cat organisation can do that already, and we do not want to pour resources into repeating good work. If that is your goal, we do hope you would partner with them.

But, Love Kuching Project has our niches. Here are some of them that set us apart from other cat rescue groups that might interest you:

• Taking in kitten rescue cases only if other fostering efforts are exhausted and human intervention is necessary for the survival of the kittens.
• Specialising in rehabiliation and care of ill and injured cats that would otherwise need to spend time and rescuers' money staying the hospital for non-invasive treatment. 
• Using holistic care methods in caring for the cats such as supplements and essential oils, thus reducing reliance on pharmaceuticals and improving quality of life for the foster cats.
• Sharing cat care tips and expanding in our cat care education efforts through talks and a feline behaviour management service to be launched this year. 
• Feline therapy outreach in hospitals and nursing homes, bringing the love of cats to humans that need it, through a researched, structured therapy programme.

We are looking for partners who wish to help us with our fundraising. We often scrape by, and while we are afloat, we will not be able to expand further if we do not do more than float.

If your CSR goals are about planting seeds and watering them to make start-up non-profits grow, we are for you. 

How can you or your organisation help? Here are some ideas:

• Organising in-house events with us as a beneficiary
• Dollar for dollar fundraising promotions or events
• In-house donation collections among the staff (receipt will be issued to the company if needed)
• Product sales proceeds to us as a beneficiary

Apart from the online reach we can give back to you for helping us, we can also give talks for cat owners among the staff, attain a specific LKP-mission-oriented KPI you would like for us to achieve as a report-back for your organisation or client, organise an adoption event for the staff.

CSR is serious brand-building business, and so, if you are keen to explore this further, email our president Elaine at elaine@lovekuchingproject.org.

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Short term sickie tenant: Queenie from Haig Road

Apart from dire cases that need hospice type of care, when we have the space and resources we also try to foster stray cats that are ill or injured and need a temporary place to stay, bringing rescuers' veterinary bills down. Queenie is one such case, one who suffered dental problems.

Queenie had gum disease

Queenie just had dental surgery. She had to have her teeth scaled and three decayed teeth removed as she hadn't been eating for days due to her dental condition. She then came here to recuperate, just arrived on Saturday night. She has a course of antibiotics to complete as well, and then she will go back to Haig Road streets.

She was a bit stressed at first, unused to indoor life, and didn't eat for a couple of days, surviving on just water and hand-fed vitamin gel.

Feeling reserved

We gave her a vitamin B injection to boost her appetite, and then used some tuna mixed with canned food to tempt her to eat. She finally ate today.

Will post updates about Queenie on our social media. Keep paws crossed she goes on the uphill track towards full recovery.

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Dancing Cat @ [@The_Arts_House] | Film Screening

By the Singapore Film Society | Distributed by Indie Story |
In Collaboration with Cat Welfare Society and Love Kuching Project
Screening Dates: 28th and 29th June 2014 (Saturday & Sunday)
Screening Time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm (including a post-screening discussion)

Our President Elaine will be taking part in a panel discussion on stray cat rescue for the Sunday 29th June session. Some of our LKP volunteers will be there too, so come and meet us!

The film is a documentary about the life of stray cats in Korea. Directed by YUN Ki-hyoung, he says, "Stray cats living on the cold asphalt of the city, they live by digging through the garbage that we throw out. This is a film based on the idea that people live on the street. And cats do too."

Tickets cost $12 (concession available for seniors, The Arts House or Singapore Film Society members) and can be purchased at this link.

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Jacqui got adopted!

Lovely Sunday mews!

Family portrait with new family member!

The family was very open to our cat care tips such as diet, litter choices and cat introduction - they have another cat they adopted from SPCA. We love how they are so willing to learn new things to make their cats' lives better.

They will be bringing Jacqui to the vet for her last booster and checkup next week.

Thank you for giving Jacqui a forever home!

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Conclusion of TNR at Renci Nursing Home and Recce of French Road for next TNR project

We concluded our TNR at Renci Nursing Home but we missed out some cats that refused to come to the feeding area at the dustbins, and we could only trap 4 of them.

Let's hope that these cats that now fend their territory as sterilised cats not only stop breeding but keep new cats from coming into the area.

Our next TNR project is going to be bigger, at French Road in the Lavender area. One block alone that we went to do a reconnaissance at had at least 12 cats.

2 red/white tabbies

One tortie mom who by now won't be nursing

A tricoloured beauty that likes the carpark

Manja unsterilised black kitty

Scaredy tabby/white that preferred hiding

Another beautiful tortoiseshell

Tabby/white friendly boy

A feral kitty that prefers hiding as well

Chubby white/tabby

White male cat

A manja torbie girl who wouldn't keep still!

That makes 12 cats and there are also cats in the surrounding blocks. We will need at least 2-3 rounds of trapping at this block to neuter as many of the cats as possible. Kittens are being born on these streets at an alarming rate and we really don't want complaints or abuse cases happening.

Our last fundraising appeal raised enough money for our Sterilisation Fund, and CWS has given us free slots for neutering every month, so we have enough funds for this. Thank you cat angels for supporting our work.

We will be Facebooking/Tweeting about the date of the first round of trapping soon. Keep a lookout: we will live Instagram report the trapping as usual.

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ADOPT: Lex the little boy kitty. Plus his full rescue story

| Lex the shy boy |

"You sure I allowed to play?"

"Ok, I play!"

Lex is from Serangoon Central, rescued after spending two full nights hiding in a drain after someone chased him inside. His rescuers Jacqueline and Eileen couldn't get him to come out, because he was so scared, obviously not used to being on the streets. He was about 6 weeks old at the time.

Signs of not being able to withstand human traffic, hiding in drains even when lured by food and such, usually indicate abandonment. We assumed this was the case with Lex. Especially when, finally rescued out of the drain by brave 24-hour SPCA rescue folks, he became an affectionate purring machine, which meant he -did- like humans, but was just terrified.

Today we received an email from another Serangoon Central resident who suspects Lex is from her area, and she provided more insight into where Lex might have come from. There has been a sudden influx of about 4 unneutered adult cats into those couple of blocks, causing lots of fights (and injuries, one cat is now hospitalised). If one of those new cats was female, Lex could be her kid born on the streets, or she could have been abandoned together with him, breaking the mother-child bond. We will be helping to investigate and assist with TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) in this area.

Selfie!

Lex is now 3 months old exactly. He has gotten his first vaccination and is due for his second. While he was here, he had a bout of runny poop, then a fever and some flu' symptoms. That took one month of two courses of antibiotics to treat (he was easy going about it). His flu' has just cleared up. He has been dewormed, and Revolution-ed as well.

Handsome white/tabby boy!

The Foster Care volunteers have taken a lot of time to socialise him during this past few weeks too, though he is still shy, he is much better now at being with humans, and seeks affection readily.

He is very good friends with his older foster sister Jacqui and is used to being around other cats.

Wanna adopt him? Find out how by seeing the right side bar on this blog under 'How to adopt' or click here.

Cannot adopt? Help us share his story and availability and guide your cat-seeking friends towards adopting from us!

"Adopt me. Or else."

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