Two weeks ago, they nailed a suspected cat killer after pressuring a town council to hook up a series of closed-circuit TV cameras in a carpark where the mangled bodies of cats had been found.
Another cat killer was tracked by volunteers in Bedok after they started active patrols.
At first, the animal welfarists handed out fliers and spoke to residents, encouraging them to keep a lookout for the cat killers. They also appealed to the authorities for help. But nothing happened.
Education consultant Sandy Lim, who is in her 40s, said she grew tired of waiting for the authorities to act. She said: 'If the authorities or the public have no interest in ending the killings, then it's really up to animal lovers to help. Body after body was found and still the killer wasn't caught. We couldn't just sit there, do nothing and hope for the police to catch the person.'
Said teacher Rebecca Ng, 34: 'It was quite disheartening to see the bloody paw prints splattered everywhere.'
Miss Lim, Ms Ng and four others - graphic designer Fiona Yuen, 32, IT consultant Lynn Lam, 33, graphic designer Mel Lim, 36, and assistant accounts manager Sharon Lee, 36 - decided they had had enough. They started a nightly patrol and enlisted the help of the neighbourhood cleaners to report the abuse to them. The going was slow and the sleepless nights wore them down but the support they received kept them going.
The Cat Welfare Society stepped in with a $1,000 reward for any witness who would testify against the cat killer, and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) funded the printing of the fliers. The women also received $1,200 from online donors, which helped them buy the CCTV cameras.
But their break came when the Marine Parade Town Council agreed to install six closed-circuit TV cameras in a multistorey carpark where several of the mangled bodies had been found over five months. A camera caught the abuser swinging a cat from a rope tied to its neck. Bloodstains splattered the walls of the sixth storey of the carpark in Jalan Dua.
Not long after, they caught their suspect.
Mr Ishak Puteh, 42, a cleaner, alerted cat sleuth Sandy Lim when he found a cat's bloody body on Aug 1. The film footage showed a van, which Ms Lim soon tracked down. She then tailed the driver to his workplace in Eunos and called in the police.
It led to the arrest of a 28-year-old air-conditioning technician, who faces charges of animal abuse. If found guilty, he could be fined up to $10,000, or jailed for up to 12 months, or both.
In the Bedok case in March, another group of sleuths took a census of the cat population and made nightly patrols to protect the creatures. For seven hours a day, they kept watch at void decks, staircase landings and streets until they caught the serial cat killer five months later.
The killer, 42-year-old packer David Hooi, was caught in the act by Miss Ngiam Mui Wah, 46. He was jailed for three months for animal abuse.
Organisations like Action for Singapore Dogs, the Cat Welfare Society, the House Rabbit Society (Singapore), Noah's Ark Lodge and Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres) are run mostly by volunteers brought together by their love for animals. And their numbers are on the rise.
Ms Sandy Lim provides food daily for about 60 stray cats and funds their sterilisation. Her efforts and those of others like her have been received warmly by the SPCA, which believes that the recent movement towards grassroots animal activism is a healthy sign that Singapore society is becoming more mature.
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