At times, it gets difficult.

Difficult to move on. Yet difficult to cease.

Looking back to what we've done, it's a raindrop in a thunderstorm. Looking forward to what needs to be done, it is an amazonic task.

At times, I don't know what to do.

There's pain. Anger. Frustration. Impatience. Fear. Yes, there's fear. Lately, it seems like I'm fighting for time. I'm dashing in my mind as if I'm running out of time. My days flash by so quickly, I stay up so late, and yet I can't wait to wake up the next morning and get going cos there's so much to be done.

And there are areas we just can't help and we hope you understand.

We do not have a holding area/foster homes for our local strays. And the bigger issue is, once you take in a stray from off the streets, you most probably cannot put him/her back on the streets again. You will have to be responsible for his/her life till death.

We cannot take in any strays cos simply, we have nowhere to keep them. From the area where our stray feeder tends to, we have 5 in the boarding shelter. They were taken off the streets cos they have been caught by the authorities (and bailed out after paying the fines) - Ben & Kumar, injured while being caught - John John, or abandoned by their previous owner - Junior & Ginne. We have to continuously raise funds to pay for their boarding fees, and this will go on for their entire life until someone adopts them.

We can't go and take any strays off the streets unless someone commits to their lifetime of expenses, else down the road, we will run dry and lose our focus in the bigger issues that matter while fighting little bush fires.

This sense of fear - of what's going to happen to all the dogs on the feeding route of our stray feeder when she can't go on feeding them anymore - if it grips me momentarily at times when I get myopic and fleshly, imagine how our stray feeder feels as she plies the streets day in and day out, knowing full well that there will come a day when she is not able to do this anymore ... a day when dogs outlive their carers ... and then what happens next?

At time I wish I had never started on anything. Like many people who live their lives..day after day after day...tight and comfy in pigeon-holes of a society that prides on safety and security be it legitimate or a false sense that is flitting if not utterly boring and kills the soul. A mundane existence, living so small a life, just for yourself and maybe expanding to include your spouse and family, but yet in the universal of infinity, our life is so so small and our concerns so so selfish that the entire creation laughs and cries over that worry of what to wear, and what to eat, and what hairstyle is the latest in thing....when the whole creation cries out for some people to stand up and SPEAK the truth of what is right and what is wrong but most of the time, it gets the cowardice of "it's ok", "never mind", "leave it to someone else".... and we sit in front of our TVs and wonder why the world seems to be crumbling downwards. Don't think for a moment that what happens across the globe has nothing to do with you.

Everything that is happening now and not happening now, everything is a result of you. A result of me. It is the culminating conclusion of a nation of silence.

Our lips are closed. Our hearts are small. We fear men and their responses. We withdraw and live a life of pretense in the Pleasantville of our minds. Hearts shut to the cries of help from our fellow human beings. Silent cries of help from the very person next to you. Spouses sleep with backs to the other. Kids are not talking to their parents. Bosses are intimidating their staff.

Then look further. Our fellow human beings in neighbouring countries are living lives so vastly different from ours, we are like kings. It is all a matter of comparison and there is no end to it.

The whole world is crying out but we must start in our own backyard. Forget about the starving kids in Africa if you won't even take a drive down to one of our children's home to offer the kids your time and gifts. Forget about saving the Sumatran Rhino if you don't even give a hoot about our native animals and the strays at your neighbourhood. It reeks of hypocrisy if you stand on a platform proclaiming your fight to save the rhinos, the sharks, the pandas... when upon your homeland, you turn your eye on that neglected animal in your neighbour's cage, that chained up animal pleading to you to do something, that captured wild bird languishing in ridiculously small cages of men who have robbed it of the vast freedom it was born to enjoy.

Aren't we all humans and aren't they all animals? What makes a human more important and worth helping than another? What makes this animal more valuable than the other that one has to be conserved and the other destroyed? One reason is the scale of numbers. We have too few of this animal cos many have been killed by men. And we have too many of this other animal thus men have to kill them. If it is indeed the sheer number that is causing a problem, then let us resolve it in the most humane manner available.

LIFE. We all have it. And we should all be given the decency to live it. And should men decide to take it away, the very least to ask is to take it with utmost humanity.

But to live, to truly live, not just for this small, minute creature called 'me, myself and I" - it involves the pain of sacrifice. If you want to help, you cannot live each day for your own convenience. Your own profits. Your own security. You will be safe, yes. But so will you be small. And you will die half the man you were born to be.

For, in an absence of pain, neither can you taste pleasure.