Lynn said:

...this old lady who hoards about 40 cats and 2 dogs in her 3 room HDB. The living condition is so terribly filthy and smelly that it's really not a place for animals to live, let alone human. ... The sight was just ghastly and the stench was unbearable. I was gagging even though I was wearing a mask. ... Inside, the place was like the House of Horror - dim and dark, blackened walls, filth and stench filled the place and encompasses you like a cocoon.

There were sick cats and kittens everywhere and they were all scared and hiding. The cats were all fed a diet of raw chicken heads ... left out for days, to the extend that chicken heads are blackened with decomposition.

When people try to remove her cats, she threatened to burn the place down, killing both herself and cats. So, we figure that brute force will not work. Just have to slowly try to clean up the place and do whatever we can for the sake of these poor animals.

The National Day mission : Jaime, her sis and Natasha bravely went in with gloves, masks and shower cap to clean up the place.

Recommended by Otterman: "These gals spent National Day in the house of horrors, cleaning the place and smuggled some cats out for a visit to the vet, and they're funding the operation themselves. Love their "can do" spirit; hats off to them!"

Link

Speranza Nuova said:

So if you expect to live longer, with ongoing healthcare costs, and if family and society cannot pick up all of the bill for you -- what can you do? How can you protect your retirement funds?

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "A provocative look at the issue of elder employment, in the context of growing life expectancy and an ageing population. What if it's actually a smart choice to keep working, even if that work is at McDonald's rather than in a high-powered air-con office?"

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Asia Times Online said:

For his pains, Mr Brown's regular column in the government-owned Today newspaper was brusquely terminated - fueling outrage in Internet chat rooms about the government's heavy-handedness and apparent lack of transparency. Meanwhile, the PAP-led government proposed this month to tighten laws that govern the Internet as part of an overhaul of the national penal code.

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "Welfare is a bad word! A very very very bad word!!!"

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In Working with the Cat Welfare Society , Dawn writes,

"We had our second Spay day yesterday. ... This time around, instead of using friendlier 'practice' cats, strays were brought in, and the experience was entirely different."

"... one of the cats was not sedated properly ... and when the volunteer took the cat out of its carrier, it leapt out. The volunteer bravely tried to contain the cat, but it gave him pretty bad scratches and bites, which is why you should never pick up a stray cat because you're going to get hurt."

Link

Dawn has beeen blogging since March 2005 and discusses TNR (trap-neuter-return), handling strays (or not!), mediation, good HDB practises and features some pretty cats!