Ghost feeding

What is ghost feeding?
Ghost feeding is the act of feeding stray animals as and when you like and not clearing up after.

& why it does more harm than good.

Ever since I’ve started feeding the stray dogs here with my neighbour on a daily basis, I’ve learnt about the mistakes I unintentionally made regarding feeding of stray animals. I started feeding this stray cat whom I named as “kit-kat” about 7 years ago when I first saw it roaming around the void deck and ironically, I’m quite scared of cats. The reason for my fear is unfounded and it stemmed from my childhood. A relative that brought me up is very fearful of cats and I was told repeatedly that the cats under the void deck were very dirty because they just lie everywhere and that i shouldn’t touch them because they are very fierce like they will scratch you and all that. Very typical auntie mentality i know. This mantra made me avoid cats growing up and I only dared touch one when I visited SPCA when I was 16 because I remember that cat being super duper chill. Like it didn’t react to anything at all and for a while, I thought it was dead. That was the 1st and last cat I sayang-ed until I met a tabby cat whom I named kit-kat. Kit-kat allowed me to stroke him and he has never once hissed at me even though I always touch his tail (which I’ve now learnt that cats don’t like to be touched at their tails and bellies) and he would also sit really close to me whenever I was waiting for my cab. I began to see him as a cat-dog because of his loving and unbothered demeanour, whenever I had to bid goodbye to him, I’d just think to myself “how nice if my dogs would accept co-living with cats” because then I would’ve adopted him.

Though it wasn’t feasible, I tried my best to feed him as frequently as I can. Feeding him brought me so much joy that I’d keep a can of cat food in my bag in case I run into other stray cats in the hood. On days when I ran out of cat canned food, I would make a trip down to the mama shop opposite and get him the best alternative I could find that is the spring water tuna from ayam brand. Overtime, I forged a closer relationship with him because he was the constant I would find all the times I was at the void deck. Never failed to appear whenever I called out his name and once, he even ran three blocks down when he heard me calling out for him at a very unexpected timing of the day. I have never interacted much with cats and my relationship with him made me question my baseless fear. Yes, cats are known to be temperamental but I never really gave them a chance to show their other more lovable side. I never gave myself a chance to understand them better and I feared them based on hearsays and assumptions and that’s on me. I started out by feeding him from a distant. So i would get his attention from a far and open the canned food, made sure he saw that I left the can of food there and run into the lift to go back up. Did this for a couple of weeks and realised, I was being so stupid. So I stayed and look from a distance while he ate and left him to finish his food halfway through the portion.

It didn’t occur to me that the emptied out can was not going to clear itself and that the remains will attract ants but miraculously, it will always be cleared away by the time I was downstairs. Continued this ignorant feeding routine for a few months when I finally bumped into the person, the cats regular feeder who has been clearing the cans on my behalf and I got chided. To be real honest, my dumbass was so offended at that point of time because I didn’t understand where all the frustrations were coming from and for the longest time, I thought it was the cleaners who cleared away the cans every morning. I thought I was doing a good deed by feeding the stray cats when in fact, I was adding more work load for their regular feeder.

I didn’t understand all of this until I became the regular feeder here and have to be the one to clear away the remaining wares and trash that other ghost feeders leave behind.

Coffeeshops, restaurants, cafes, basically most food places hire people to clear up after their diners but when it comes to feeding the strays, the people who feed the strays aren’t hired or paid. We do this voluntarily outside of our working hours. We volunteer to feed the strays and to clear up after our own trash and we take time and effort to learn about the strays routines, their timings and consider the other factors like pests and ants before deciding to pack the food in a certain way so we don’t cause disturbance and inconvenience to the public whilst feeding the strays. So my point is, if you want to contribute to the strays in your area by feeding them, make sure you take all these into considerations and clean up after yourself because the trash doesn’t disappear on it’s own. The last thing we want is have people call up the authorities and complain about the trash because then the strays will be relocated to a very non-ideal environment and we won’t be able to feed them anymore.