porridge is doing well

Her eye is less red from her cat flu' now, but she still sneezes every now and then, but no thick ocular or nasal discharge which is a good sign towards recovery. Here she is eating a meal of Nutripe Beef to which I add vitamins for immunity, and Addiction Salmon Bleu.

Porridge is a really sweet girl, so easy-going. Does her litter in the pan as she should, meows quietly, purrs when you are near her, enjoys climbing up and down the pen and in and out the hammock, and cuddles and hugs! She isn't fussy with food, and is fine if left alone, which is a good thing because we have to quarantine her in the pen due to her flu' in case we have young kitty visitors or fosters - her pen area is disinfected regularly.

Hope she gets better soon! She deserves a good home, she will make a really lovely cat companion for a deserving human.

Akira

On Thursday night when we went to reconnaissance Joo Chiat Complex for this weekend's neutering there, we rescued a small kitten, who is now named Akira. He is a one-month old male kitten, a lilac mackerel tabby.

Pictures taken by Melissa, whose home is where Akira is being fostered now. Akira was found sick, with conjunctivitis, and is now on medication till he recovers. We passed Melissa medication for his eyes (Ilium Opticin), Vibravet antibiotics and chlorpheniramine in case he has a runny nose, which thankfully he doesn't. He will be available for adoption once his eyes recovers. Melissa has litter-trained him and is now weaning him off bottled milk, giving him fresh minced meat or Love Kuching's Nutripe Chicken to start. Pretty soon he will be able to eat dry food too.

When Akira recovers he will be moving to mine and Andy's foster home where we can host adopters and visitors that come to see him! For now, he will be rehabilitating in a great foster home. Follow Melissa on Twitter to read updates on Akira.

sam and helga have been adopted!

Zoukie's adopter from last year, contacted us again when he saw Sam and Helga for adoption. Zoukie, now named Leo, came along to visit Helga and Sam today, and his human-daddy (also named Sam!) decided he would adopt both of them, as you can see from this happy picture.

It was a really enjoyable visit because we got to see Leo and hear about how he was doing. Leo had peed in the car on the way over to our place, so Andy gave Leo a shower and blow-dry, and thereafter Leo spat and hissed all the way because he felt so unglamorous in front of his two new siblings.

Sam and Helga joins Leo, and two other cats Lara and Luna, in a nice big home in Dover where Helga and Sam will have their own room for now till they integrate with the rest. Leo seemed pleased in his own bad-ass attitude way that he was to have new companions, as Lara and Luna are sisters and haven't really been much kitty-companionship for Leo because they pretty much stick to themselves. Sam and Helga will be going to the vet for check-ups - their vet will be Animal Recovery Centre at Simei.

We are happy for this family of now-five cats! 

more on Joo Chiat Complex

As we prepare for the neutering that we will be carrying out for the street cats at Joo Chiat Complex, we had visited the place a few times before the actual trapping-and-neutering tomorrow 5 June.

Initially, we counted 8 cats that needed neutering there. But on our reconnaissance there yesterday we realise it is more than 8. So we called Damy and told him that the cat-count is more than we initially communicated to him. We will therefore need to trap-and-neuter over two days this weekend, Saturday, and Sunday.

We counted again tonight on our feeding excursion there, and there are 7 more cats to add to the cat-count, as you can count here -

Not all the red cats are male, one of the two classic tabby red cats is female, and the tortoiseshell is female too of course. If we are unable to raise enough funds for all these 15 cats we will be capping this weekend's neutering at S$850 based on funds raised (thank you donors!). Because most of the female cats will likely be on heat or mildly pregnant there, we may or may not have enough to do all 15 including trapping, transporting and boarding costs, we may have to skip one or two of the cats if there are much more female cats than male cats.

There are also some kittens there, one of them Akira, a lilac mackeral tabby male kitten, one-month-old, who was rescued last night and now staying and volunteer fosterer Melissa's (our partner volunteer) house. Akira will be moving to mine and Andy's house for adoption where he can be visited, when he has recovered from his conjunctivitis. The other kittens there are slightly older, about 6-8 weeks old, and if we can rescue any of them to re-home, we will, so as to complete the stray cat management cycle at Joo Chiat Complex's back lanes.

Do keep visiting our blog for more updates on our sterilisation and rescue work at Joo Chiat Complex!

porridge-girl

This sweet girl was found near a Geylang coffeeshop that sells Teochew porridge, stricken with cat flu'. Her rescuer Liyin brought her to the vet for an antibiotics jab, and she is now rehabilitating in mine and Andy's foster home. We have named her Porridge.

She is about 7 weeks old, white with grey. A really confident and outgoing girl, agreeable and enjoys human company.

When she has recovered fully from her flu', she will be looking for a new permanent home to live with. 

our main foster home for love kuching project rescued cats

Our foster space is located in Ubi. Here is a map of where we are located. The star indicates where our home is -

You can also find us on Foursquare.

Visitation is by appointment only.

sam becomes our free-roaming foster kitten

We introduced Sam to our house beyond his pen for a full day and night and he has been doing okay. His diarrhoea and stress has abated, hence we decided to let him run together with our own cats. He has made friends with our cat Scooter, who himself loves kittens, and Sam is now making himself at home on our bed and sofa.

We are also training him basic domestic cat house rules, like not climbing on tables and countertops, not getting into our human things, not playing with wires, not climbing windows. He enjoys playing with actual cat-toys and our cat condo, so we lead him to those instead. So far he has been trying his best to be a good boy! However, perhaps he doesn't want to share our cats' litter boxes, so he had an 'accident' outside the box, on a floor towel near our cats' kitchen litter box. He has access to his own, so we are a bit puzzled as to why he did that. Will need to get ourselves our Feliway soon, perhaps later today, to prevent more accidents as such - Feliway prevents urine- and defecation-marking around the house and reduces stress levels that leads a cat to do so. Have disinfected the areas he did his 'accidents' and am laundering the floor towel now, after Andy placed the same soiled towel in the litter box to show Sam where his pee should have gone. He needs to be a good boy to get adopted!

He is wearing a collar - we have two designated for Love Kuching's cats that free-roam our house - so we can find him easily to check on him. Also if he knocks something of ours over, I can hear that he is the culprit from the unique sound of each cat's bell, and train him not to do so again.

By tonight we will be using his pen for another kitten, will blog more about her later when she arrives. Will keep training Sam!

If you are keen to adopt this lovable boy, do contact us: Elaine at 90880675 or Andy at 81277072 to arrange a visit and play-session with him at our foster home in Ubi.

the heart of the matter

When Andy and I started a simple cat blog in early 2009, it was simply because we love cats and we enjoy spending time with stray cats and rescuing them when needed. Loving the animals in our lives and neighbourhood - I said before that this will never change, because it is the very essence of why we at Love Kuching Project will continue to do what we do.

Enjoying our cats and what we do for them and their street-siblings is very much a part of our lives. One could say that cats are our hobby. We enjoy their companionship, enjoy shopping for their needs, caring for them, and talking to the stray cats we meet. Like any hobby, we spend our own spare cash to indulge in this hobby, that of owning and rescuing cats. We each have our own personal hobbies as well but this is one of the hobbies we spend time on together.

By and by our hobby became an animal welfare group coined by the press, and we started to get  requests from the public on how they could donate and help, and more requests to rescue, and adopt, cats. Sponsors started coming forth, from private patrons to corporate sponsors. We became an adopted charity by our kind corporate sponsor The Water Dish.

Yet for Andy and I we still find that cats are our hobby, not work nor a chore. We enjoy doing things like decorating our boarding pens, feeding milk to orphaned kittens, taking pictures of them and sharing their stories to the world. It is probably true that ultimately passion is the heart of the matter.

We are at heart an organic group, one that evolves from our nucleus which is our hobby, our passion, for cats. where we live, in Kampung Ubi, sociologically an organic community as well, hanging out and gathering for one another's common interests is very much a regular activity for our residents.

At Love Kuching Project, for the cats, we don't have meetings, we have gatherings. We don't have tasks, we believe in the gotong royong style of helping one another out with things that need to be done. We don't operate like an office, we operate like a commune. At the heart of the matter, it is about community and love. We hope you get the same vibe when you visit us!

update on sam

Sam is doing much better by the day! Initially arrived totally stressed out, with diarrhoea, but is so much better now and really ready for a new home!

I dewormed him the day after he came to us, and no worms were eliminated. His diarrhoea persisted, and I put him on loperadamide and antacid syrup daily. Today, he hasn't had any runny poo at all, though he did vomit once in the morning. So am going to put him on antacid tomorrow for one more day just to make sure his tummy is nice and settled.

As for his stress, he has gotten much more used to being an indoor cat. Initially, when he arrived, I had to give him a cocktail of Pet Ease gel and xanax (anti-anxiety medication) because he meowed incessantly, trying to climb his way everywhere to purported freedom. He had hated being penned and being inside closed doors. We moved him to a bigger pen and he relaxed more. By the third day, his crazy loud meowing toned down, even more so because he has had visitors come by to cuddle him and give him attention - human company works wonders for him. Another wonderful thing is the blend of lavender and chamomile aromatherapy oil I have been diffusing into our foster living space for him daily, and today he no longer needed any anti-anxiety medication at all! Just the lavender and chamomile with lots of cuddles and attention and he is a-okay. Even though I had to move him to a smaller pen today because Helga arrived, he was completely fine. One of his visitors, my student, cuddled him and placed him in our kitten pen's hammock and he enjoys lounging in it, and on the blankets and pillow I gave him as well. If you are keen to visit him just to cuddle and play with him, do contact us to say you want to see him for playtime!

He is currently on a diet of Addiction Salmon Bleu and Nutripe Beef. He drinks and eats well and is litter trained.

If you are keen to visit and adopt Sam, do contact us - Elaine at 90880675 or Andy at 81277072 to arrange a visit.

Helga arrives!

Helga has arrived at our foster home and is looking for a new forever family!

Helga is a beautiful, neutered 5 year old tortoiseshell Persian, who was passed along like furniture to Aswat because the owner had to move house. We wonder why Helga can't be moved together with the family to their new place, and so it is our hope that we find a far better owner for this lovely girl. Aswat groomed her fur, clipping away the matted areas - but not perfectly owing to his partial blindness - and she is healthy. She is a girl who likes head scratches and is friendly towards other cats, with a cute low-toned meow when she tries to communicate with us.

We will share more about this girl's personality as we get to know her. Our cats are now visiting her at her pen and getting to know her, with hisses from either parties for now of course, and in time I reckon she will get comfortable with their presence and can share their toilet and feeding station eventually so she can roam around un-penned.

Update: More pictures of Helga!

We added a second tier to her pen so she could have more privacy by sleeping on a fleece blanket below it, and climb atop to feed and drink. She drinks enough water, eliminates just fine and enjoys her dry food with canned food. She is skinny and therefore needs some fattening up, so will be feeding her more often with Nutripe - she likes the beef flavour! - and Addiction Salmon Bleu kibbles donated by the Ang family. She is a lounge cat indeed, really enjoying snoozing on her fleece blanket and just watching the world go by, occasionally meowing and purring at us. For now she still hasn't made friends with our own three cats but she is not violent nor aggressive towards them, she is a gentle girl at heart. She enjoys exploring the different parts of our house when we let her out of the pen supervised, she also enjoys being carried.

She is now staying with us and she can be visited at our place, call Elaine at 90880675 or Andy at 81277072 to arrange for a visit.