30 cats allegedly abandoned by owner at S'pore pet hotel for over 6 months, looking for new homes

Now there are 24 cats left to be rehomed.

Alfie Kwa | April 22, 2022, 01:37 PM

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Pet hotel, grooming and spa store, Petopia, has been housing 30 cats that were allegedly abandoned by their owner.

The store has since rehomed six of these cats and is looking to rehoming the rest in due time.

Abandoned by owner

Marcus Khoo, the executive director at Petopia, told Mothership that he was approached by a customer to house 31 cats in April 2021.

One of the cats passed away before coming to the pet hotel. Image courtesy of Marcus Khoo.

Khoo then told the customer, named Faisal, that he was able to house the cats at the time.

Khoo said: "It was the time when Vaccinated Travel Lanes (VTL) were not out yet, there was space."

With pet hotels normally catering to pet owners who are travelling, this was a lull period for them. Because of that, he decided to help Faisal out.

Subsequently, Faisal said he would need to house the cats indefinitely, or until all of them were rehomed, to which Khoo agreed.

Image courtesy of Marcus Khoo.

After some discussions, the pet store agreed to take in the cats at a fee of S$1,800 a month, which is about S$60 a day for the 30 cats. This fee only included housing.

Faisal would still have to provide food and cat litter.

From July 2021, the store said it had to increase the fee to S$2,100 a month because of the "increasing operating costs".

According to Khoo, Faisal agreed to this arrangement.

Faisal also had to pay from S$60 to S$80 per cat for grooming and showering. This would be in intervals of five to six weeks.

Shop bore the cost

However, since October 2021, Faisal stopped paying for the cats boarding and disappeared.

Image courtesy of Marcus Khoo.

Khoo added that they've contacted lawyers to deal with the issue but Faisal remains uncontactable.

According to the letter of agreement between Faisal and Petopia, seen by Mothership, if an owner fails to pay necessary fees after seven days, the pet store has the right to take issues into its own hands.

This was under a pet abandonment clause in the letter.

Since then they've been finding homes for the cats and have successfully rehomed six of them.

Khoo added that they screen the adopters' backgrounds first.

They have rejected a couple of interested families because they had no experience with cats, didn't want to put up screens on their HDB windows or had dogs at home.

But the longer the cats stayed in the centre, the more cost the company has to bear.

Khoo estimates that he has borne close to S$30,000 taking care of the abandoned cats.

Khoo has reached out to Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and National Parks Board (NParks) for help but to no avail.

SPCA reportedly told Khoo that since the cats were not his, they were not allowed to take them unless Faisal signs a "letter of surrender".

However, with Faisal still uncontactable, Khoo said this was not an option.

Mothership has reached out to NParks and SPCA for a statement.

Potentially a problem

Khoo said that incidents like this could potentially be a problem for animal shelters or pet hotels like Petopia.

Image courtesy of Marcus Khoo.

He claimed that if people knew how easy it was to abandon their animals at such places and disappear, more cases like this may arise.

Khoo added that this was not the first time Faisal had reached out to animal shelters or pet boarding centres.

Back in December 2019, Faisal had apparently approached a shelter asking if there was space to house his cats.

Conversation between an animal shelter operator, Lily, and Faisal. Screenshots were forwarded to Khoo. Image courtesy of Marcus Khoo.

Conversation between an animal shelter operator, Lily, and Faisal. Screenshots were forwarded to Khoo. Image courtesy of Marcus Khoo.

Khoo said if a similar situation were to happen again, he'd do a more thorough background check on the person before agreeing to house the cats.

He would also have to question why the person had so many cats, and if they were registered and microchipped?

"I threw caution to the wind," Khoo admitted.

The cats are put up for adoption on several social media platforms including the Facebook group Sayang Our Singapore's Community Cats.

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Top images courtesy of Marcus Khoo.