14 animals looking for new homes after they were found living in squalor at Bukit Merah flat
While there's no harm in having multiple pets at home, things can get tricky when there are 14 animals under your care and you're a bit of a hoarder.
That's what a group of volunteers discovered when they found a HDB unit with a menagerie of pets in 'horrible conditions' at a Bukit Merah rental flat recently.
A volunteer with volunteer platform Keeping Hope Alive,Teo Hui Yi Calesta and the founder Fion Phua found this flat when out conducting their regular Sunday door knocks at Block 92 Henderson Road.
Phua started Keeping Hope Alive in 2000 to provide a better quality of life to the less-privileged Singaporeans, visiting one-room and two-room HDB flats to help those in need.
Teo, a National University of Singapore undergraduate, told AsiaOne: "Together with the other volunteers, we went in to clean the flat, only to realise the animals are in distress."
On Sunday (June 26), Phua posted a video on Facebook pointing out that this HDB unit is home to 10 cats, three terrapins and one rabbit.
Later that day, Teo also headed to Facebook seeking new homes for the cats.
Teo said that the woman has a tendency to hoard "multiple things and items" and it's clear from the videos and photographs on Facebook that cleanliness was not high up on her priority list.
Teo told AsiaOne that the elderly woman did not take kindly to the volunteers wanting to help her pets although she was agreeable to them cleaning her place.
"The lady doesn't allow anyone to take her animals, even to see the veterinary surgeon," Teo said to AsiaOne.
By putting up a Facebook post, she hopes that the online community could help with animal food, supplies or vet bills.
"Urgently in need of cat fosterers/adopters/caregivers. If there's no fosterers, we can't remove the cats and we do not have any place to house them. Please help," Teo pleaded on Facebook.
When AsiaOne spoke to her today, Teo said that there has been no progress in rehoming the cats.
Aside from the animals, the elderly woman required assistance too.
A group of more than 10 volunteers helped to remove the trash from the HDB unit and provided the elderly woman with new furniture and paid her utility bills in full.
Painters were brought in at the last minute to spruce up the walls as well.
Teo told AsiaOne that there are actually many hoarders living in rental units that are in conditions "worse than this" in other HDB estates.
"But every house we visit still brings a lot of sadness, knowing that these elderly live in such an environment," she said.
In March, some residents from an HDB block at King George's Avenue complained that a foul stench was emitting from a particular neighbour's unit.
A woman told the Shin Min Daily News that she saw workers clearing two to three truckloads of items from one person's flat with hundreds of cockroaches emerging from that unit.
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amierul@asiaone.com
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