Wednesday, December 27, 2006

The cat that got away?

On our way to the MRT station every morning, the SO and I would pass by a few community cats at this particular block that is about 1 km away from our block. The cats that we've come into contact with are:

a) Shiny, a docile, affectionate and always-so-slim female blackie with the loudest, manly but manja voice;

b) Shaggy, a shy and wary female brown tabby that has survived a very bad case of skin problem, and still surviving;

c) Jumbala, a small sized, female Bengali-looking ginger (all over ginger tones) with a soft and the sweetest meowing voice I've heard; so-named because of her resemblance to Jambala from Metta Cattery, where we'd volunteered our "housekeeping and sayang" services in the past.

Jambala from MC

The trio would usually wait outside a particular unit to be fed, although it's not often that we get to meet Jumbala, the elusive one. At times, I would think of her just before reaching that block, and then lo and behold, I would find her perched on the ledge waiting - maybe I have ESP? ;P

Being a shy cat, it took quite a long time to get to know Jumbala, a longer time before she would come near me, and an even longer time for her to allow me to touch her. I find her very sweet-looking, and rare for such a beautiful female ginger.

What never fails to puzzle me is that after all these years, Jumbala is still not sterilised. I wonder why, when all the other community cats have already been done with. Why is Jumbala being left out? The worse thing is we keep seeing her getting pregnant, like two or three times a year, although we have never seen any kittens in the vicinity, despite hunting for them. I think she's quite a poor thing to always be under the "control" of their instincts to go through the cycle of mating, pregnancy and giving birth over and over. Meanwhile, we don't know what happened to her kittens.

The last time I saw Jumbala was a couple of weeks' ago, and I think she's pregnant...yet again.

1 comment:

Singapore Community Cat said...

Jambala, the hearing impaired cat in MettaCattery.
Why don't you borrow a trap and cease Jumbala's endless of pregnancies? I have a trap that is now with Vincent. You can use it. I can use Carol's trap if needed to trap the blackp-and-white cat next week.