As G Man said the thread was written with a heavy sense of sacarsm. To give everyone a clearer picture of what is happening.
The Cat Welfare Society, a non profit animal welfare group and SPCA has been working with various Town Councils to implement a TNRM (Trap Neuter Release Management) in which strays are trapped, castrated and released. (More on the program later). For Tampines Town Council, they have not only not entertained any appeals or invitations to join the program, they would not even talk to representative from Cat Welfare. Finally the last agreement was that no sterlized cats would be put down. This is a an agreement that is on going between various town councils and the 2 organisations.
On the first day of the operation, however an obviously sterlized cat was caught and a caregiver tried to get it release to no avail. She went to the Town Council and was given a merry go round, push from dept to dept and finally told all officers in charge of project on leave or on mc. (Tell me which project goes on esp on day one and all in charge officers are not around??) Luckily in the end the cat was released after much appealing.
1) Cats are not strays, they are mostly abandoned home pets. Result of HDB's policy of no cats allowed. Neighbours complain and residents that are irresponsible decide to throw their cats out the house. Hence creating strays.
2) Cats managed to survive in the wild because naturally they have not reached 100 percent domestication like dogs which will find a hard time finding food and are generally found in bad shape without their owners.
3) Currently there is a Trap, Neuter, Release Management or TNRM program in which volunteers are trapping cats and neutering or castrating for those who dont know what is neuter and then releasing them. Castration eliminates problems such as howling, mating calls, spraying of urine. The reasons being the cats no longer produce the hormones that make them get crazy during mating season and become literally walking carpets that sleep, eat and just laze around.
4) Getting rid of cats in an area will only result in new cats moving in from other areas. Leaving sterlized cats in the area prevents this as the existing cats will guard their territory. Hence massive culling will only backfire as you leave a big space gap for cats from other territories to move in a breed. Unless you do a 100 percent island wide cull and poison every single cat. There will be cats.
5) Finally I believe that we have 2 statues of the kuchinta at the Singapore River. It's so ironic that we honour and remember the Singapore Cat and yet on the other hand we are working towards 100 percent elimination of cats. It's like an Statue of the American Bald Eagle being proudly displayed at Capital Hill and the other hand the bird is being shot by farmers as Vermin.
6) We created this strays and its our responsiblity towards them. TRNM is hoping that we can sterlized all the cats and hence let the cat population die out naturally. Cats are living creatures like us, I for one dont think that you "delete" it when it has become a problem.
7) For the point by one member here that TC wont spend money on neutering, for all here to know, the TRNM project is fully funded by volunteers and not a single government dollar or tax payer dollar is used. Volunteers pay for sterlization and vets offer hefty discounts and the program has been successful for a few years. The only task of TC is to inform pest control that all sterlized cats (Identifed by a clipped ear, means the tip of ear is cut off) are not to be caught. Town Council dont have to do a single other thing.
P.S for those who say feeding is wrong. Irresponsible feeding is but responsible feeding draws cats away from your homes and make sure they dont need to go near your homes to find food. And SM Goh did say that feeding is not illegal just feed responsibly.