It’s 7.30pm on a Monday, and we are at a Queenstown HDB estate, watching an elderly lady carefully scoop pet food onto small cardboard pieces before placing them around the area.
The woman is 67-year-old Madam Lim, who has been dutifully feeding the cats at Mei Ling Street twice daily for the past two decades. Without fail.
In fact, she was so dedicated to her feline friends that she quit her job and sacrificed her hobbies just so she could take better care of them.
What could be the driving force behind such selfless commitment? MS News sits down for a chat with the full-time cat caregiver to find out what keeps her going, and how her love for the animals helped her out of a bleak time in her life.
Some folks may recognise Madam Lim as the cat caregiver whose phone was stolen while she was feeding the community cats at Mei Ling Street in Queenstown.
The culprit had allegedly swiped it right out of her cart, which she uses to transport pet food, water, and cleaning supplies.
Unfortunately, Madam Lim tells us that not only has she been unable to get her stuff back, but the police also have not caught any suspects as the evidence wasn’t strong enough.
She’s most upset about losing the photos on her phone, especially the ones of the dear cats under her care.
That wasn’t the only setback Madam Lim has faced ever since she started looking after more than 100 kitties over the years, although that number has since gone down to about 70 now.
While cat feeders are generally lauded, some of Madam Lim’s neighbours and own family members aren’t so accepting of her benevolent act.
Many people have berated her for feeding the cats in the past. Some believe that she’s wasting her time and money — an opinion they weren’t afraid to say to her face.
But Madam Lim, whose petite frame and cheerful demeanour belie her fierce disposition, refuses to take any hostility lying down.
“I will scold them back!” she laughs.
If you don’t stand up for yourself, people will keep taking advantage of you. Now, nobody dares to bully me.
Her daughter, who lives with her, as well as her late mother, weren’t exactly fans of Madam Lim’s habit either. Not that the feisty feeder would let them stop her, anyway.
“I’m someone who will just do what I want to do,” she shrugs. “As long as I’m not doing anything wrong, nobody can stop me.”
Madam Lim became a full-time cat caregiver in 2002, about three years after she moved into her Mei Ling Street flat.
Back then, she noticed a lot of cats in the area. She took pity on them when she saw them scrounging for a meal from discarded leftovers.
Once, she saw a cat gnawing on a bare chicken bone. She quickly threw the bone away and gave the feline her own food.
More people tend to like dogs over cats, so I figured I’d give my love to cats instead.
Now, she goes down to feed the Mei Ling Street cats twice a day – breakfast and dinner – every single day, rain or shine.
Each feeding session used to take three hours when she had over 100 tummies to fill. Now that only about 70 of them are left, she can be done in an hour.
Besides settling their meals, Madam Lim also takes the cats to the vet for check-ups or sterilisation, which helps keep the population under control.
Needless to say, such an endeavour doesn’t come cheap.
Madam Lim revealed that she spends about S$2,000 a month taking care of the cats. This used to come out of her own pocket, but now that she’s retired, she gets contributions from her three children, her CPF retirement fund, and kind donors.
Throughout all this time, she claims she’s never run into the problem of not having enough food for the kitties. She says with a smile,
A lot of people have taken care of me and have been very good to me.
When we ask what makes taking care of the cats so worthwhile, Madam Lim’s reply is simple: “It makes me happy!”
Having the cats come up to her with affectionate headbutts and attention-seeking meows, as if to say “thank you”, is enough of a reward for her.
In fact, she says that feeding the cats literally helped cure her depression.
She began suffering from the condition in 2000 due to various factors, such as family problems and an economic recession that threatened her job security.
To make things worse, the government was catching stray cats then, further upsetting Madam Lim, who was already occasionally feeding the critters and had a soft spot for them.
With so many worries on her mind, she sank into depression and needed to see a psychiatrist for medication.
About two years later, Madam Lim started regularly feeding the community cats.
She realised that this made her feel a lot better, and soon, she recovered from her depression and no longer needed meds.
“Seeing the cats eat just lightened my mood. It helped me tremendously!” she beams. “So I always say that if someone feels depressed, they should keep doing the things that make them happy.”
Before she retired in 2010, Madam Lim took on many different kinds of jobs, from being a bookkeeper to a sales promoter.
Despite coming home very late at night, she would still make sure to head out and feed the cats until the wee hours of the morning. Then, after getting just two or three hours of sleep, she would wake up to go to work again.
“I started dozing off at work,” she recalls. “I thought, ‘This won’t do. It’s not good if my boss sees me like this.’ I was also worried I would collapse out of exhaustion, so I quit my job for the cats!”
Madam Lim’s own interests and hobbies have also taken a back seat.
“I like singing, dancing, and taking classes to learn new things, but because of the cats, I can’t do it,” she says.
I sacrificed a lot for these cats over the past 20 years.
Vacations are out of the question as well — Madam Lim admits that she hasn’t travelled overseas a single time in at least two decades.
“I’d love to, but there’s no one to take over [to feed the cats] while I’m away,” she sighs. “Who would be willing to do it for a week?”
However, her motivation to keep the cats well-fed seems to far outweigh her desire to holiday in a foreign land.
“I know they are waiting for me,” she says. “Cats are incredibly patient and can wait for a very long time, even hours. So cat caregivers always think, ‘Aiyah, we cannot not go. They are waiting for us.'”
To shine a spotlight on this selfless heroine, a photo exhibition called ‘CatGivers’ (short for cat caregivers) is being held at Mei Ling Market & Food Centre from now till 18 Sep.
The exhibition, which Queenstown Member of Parliament (MP) Eric Chua visited recently, showcases the bond between caregiver and cat through a series of lovely shots by photographer Khoo Yu.
Source: @ericchuasl.sg on Instagram
If you would like to help Madam Lim by donating, you can contact her via her Facebook page here. You can also make a transfer to PayNow at 97705097 or POSB bank account 144-00434-5.
Alternatively, Madam Lim accepts cat food donations and has requested any of the following brands and flavours:
Caring for just one animal already takes a lot of time and effort, but doing it for 100 of them – and for 20 years – requires a whole new level of compassion.
What’s more, Madam Lim endured criticism and opposition to ensure that the vulnerable critters around her won’t suffer.
One could almost say she was sent from above to the cats of Mei Ling Street. And she seems to think so too.
“I believe it was heaven’s will,” she muses when we ask why she chose to feed the cats. “When you’re put on this earth to do something and the time comes, you just have to do it.”
Well, divine intervention or not, we hope that Madam Lim inspires others to be more caring for other living things. Who knows, by doing that, someone might just find the healing they need in their life as she did.
Know more inspiring individuals like Madam Lim? Get in touch with us via email at news@mustsharenews.com.
Featured image by MS News.
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