Babywail's Shelter

You won't believe it until you see it with your own eyes.

The background : 
I heard from Jaime and Penny about this old lady who hoards about 40 cats and 2 dogs in her 3 room HDB.  The living condition is so terribly filthy and smelly that it's really not a place for animals to live, let alone human.

The visit :
Last weekend, we went to visit the place.  The sight was just ghastly and the stench was unbearable.  I was gagging even though I was wearing a mask.  Although the windows were sealed shut with plastic sheet, you could smell the stench once you exit from the lift.  There were junk laying outside the unit at the lift lobby and corridor.  Inside, the place was like the House of Horror - dim and dark, blackened walls, filth and stench filled the place and encompasses you like a cocoon. 

There were sick cats and kittens everywhere and they were all scared and hiding.  Many were having conjunctivitis eye infection, some having flu and upper respiratory syndrome.  According to Jaime, quite alot of kittens have died.  The environment is just not conducive because it's dirty and contaminated, causing the virus and germs to be even more contagious.

The cats were all fed a diet of raw chicken heads.  The old lady's fridge doesn't work so all raw food are left out for days, to the extend that chicken heads are blackened with decomposition.  When Jaime lifted up newspapers that were covering some decomposed chicken heads, she saw many squirming maggots.

The cats have cockroaches for company.  The walls were just crawling with roaches and other unidentifiable insects and bugs.  They were breeding in the wall crevices and cracks.  The floor is smeared with faeces and urine.  Some cats were having diarrhea so the whole place is just one huge shithole! (Sorry...lack of a better word to describe the place.)

Roaches and maggots are not the only breeding beings there, even the cats were breeding non-stop because they are not sterilised.  Old lady refuses to let anyone bring her cats for sterilisation or even medical treatment.  When people try to remove her cats, she threatened to burn the place down, killing both herself and cats.  So, we figure that brute force will not work.  Just have to slowly try to clean up the place and do whatever we can for the sake of these poor animals.

The National Day mission :  Jaime, her sis and Natasha bravely went in with gloves, masks and shower cap to clean up the place.  I went in with another gal to smuggle out 3 cats in serious condition and brought them to the vet.  One cat, suspected pregnant, seems to be having quite serious UTI (Urinary Tract Infection), and the vets are suspecting that her kidney / liver are malfunctioning.  A medium-sized kitten has severe conjunctivitis and diarrhea.  And a tiny palm-sized long-hair kitten has such a serious eye infection that one eyeball is about to explode.  It's at risk of losing that eye.

I really salute Jaime, her sis and Natasha.  Despite the filth and stench, they stayed in there for hours to clean up the place.  I was already trying not to puke from the smell while standing outside the house!

Hopefully we'll have enough finances and energy to keep going....

Here's another author's account of the episode : http://maovellous.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/super-heroes/

Pictures :

Cat Hoarding