Paws for a cause
Not just herding cats: Temasek treasury director Joanne Ng puts her skillsets and passions to good use at the Cat Welfare Society.
A kind gesture, no matter how small, can bring about an impact we least expect. In this ongoing series, we comb through the office in search of colleagues who are making a difference to the lives of others — through the way they live theirs.
She walks gingerly through the streets of a private residential estate off Jalan Eunos, eyes darting.
Every so often, she crouches, peers through the gates of terrace houses and under parked vehicles, jingling a bunch of keys.
“The clinking sound attracts them,” she whispers.
It is a Saturday evening and Joanne Ng, a longtime volunteer with the Cat Welfare Society (CWS) is assisting fellow volunteers in trapping stray cats for sterilization.
Compared to culling, Joanne explains that this process, also known as Trap, Neuter and Release or TNR in short, is a more humane way of controlling the population of strays.
“When the number of stray cats are kept manageable, we get fewer complaints from residents. The cats will also be better off because they now have access to more food from cat feeders,” says Joanne. The cost of neutering is borne by the charity and the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority,” she adds.
Sterilisation of cats, according to CWS, has more than halved the population of strays from 150,000 in the 1990s to under 60,000 now.
Trapping these notoriously nocturnal animals can sometimes take the entire night.
The director with Temasek’s Treasury team also dons the corporate hat for the animal welfare group, helping out with fundraising and various educational and adoption drives in her free time over the last four years.
Her affinity with the furry and four-legged started young, when she was growing up in a “kampong-style” household with dogs and rabbits.
When she was 12, the family pet rabbit, aptly named Rabbit, went missing and was later found at the foot of her apartment block — dead with its spine broken.
The bunny was apparently flung over the ledge by a neighbour, who got frustrated when it excreted at his doorstep.
“I was heartbroken, and cried as I held it in my arms. I kept thinking why would anyone do this. I was just a helpless kid, with no evidence to confront him,” recounts the 43-year-old wistfully.
That tragic event moved Joanne from affection to advocacy.
In 2007, the then-multinational banker turned up at the local SPCA to volunteer at the dog kennels. She was, however, asked to try her hands at the cattery instead.
It was there that Joanne rekindled her love for the whiskered creature.
“Cats are often misunderstood. I only remember chasing them as a kid and them hissing and scratching me but I didn’t realise they did that only because they were in a defensive mode,” she says.
But it was one particular cat at the shelter — which she described as having a “cool temperament” and “looked very attractive” — that stole her heart.
“It was almost like a dog trapped in a cat’s body. It’s like you have them in a smaller version and they clean themselves. I thought it was a perfect combination!” she exclaims.
Joanne returned two weeks later to adopt the grey striped feline which she named Tiger which she passed on to her sister when she had to relocate to Tokyo and Hong Kong for work.
While in Hong Kong, she adopted another cat and named it Tora, or “tiger” in Japanese. She now has four cats, all with Japanese names — Tora, Neko (“cat”), Goma (“sesame”) and Biru (“beer”).
In 2014, she quit banking and left the rat race to head up the Cat Welfare Society.
Besides organising adoption drives and raising funds using her wide network of contacts from her previous career, Joanne also worked to push the national sterilisation programme into the industrial areas, and piloted a similar programme with NParks.
“My ex-colleagues thought I had gone crazy. But the people who knew me well like family and friends thought that if anyone were to do this, it would be me,” she says.
“I was at a point in my career where things were quite stagnant. I’ve gotten to such a comfortable level that if I had to do my job with my eyes closed, I could. I felt I needed to do something more.”Joanne stayed on as CEO for one-and-a-half years before returning to the corporate world.
“It’s not about the money. When I stepped down, I donated every single cent of my income with CWS back to the charity,” she says.
Joanne, who is single, adds: “I think I have been very blessed to get to where I am in life. It is really a pure sense of having taken so much from life, you decide it’s time to give back. It’s that simple and nothing too complicated.”
These days, Joanne still helps out at CWS with fundraising and recruiting volunteers –by keeping her eyes peeled in the office.
Her target: “Colleagues who have calendars on the desk or screensavers with cute animals, ,” she adds, laughing.
“Cats are the real underdogs in life!” Joanne quips. “They need all the help we can give”.
The Cat Welfare Society (CWS) has been a registered charity since 2004 and was granted Institutions of A Public Character (IPC) status in 2013. Besides a nation-wide sterilisation programme, the society works with the relevant government bodies and institutions and in tackling issues of cat abuse, abandonment and also public education of cat ownership.