The Water Dish

Love Kuching Project by The Water Dish

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About Love Kuching Project

Used to be named Ubi Kuching Project, they partnered with corporate sponsor The Water Dish in May 2010 and are now known as Love Kuching Project by The Water Dish. They are a group of residents in the estate of Ubi, Singapore that banded together to promote the following:

1. Responsible pet ownership
2. Stray cat management through sterilisation
3. Rescue of animals in need such as the sick, orphaned or abandoned
4. Pet adoption

They are co-owned by The Water Dish.

Responsible pet ownership

Love Kuching Project believes that animal welfare is enhanced through educating pet owners. They believe in sharing pet care tips, promoting healthy diets for animals, promoting sterilisation of pet cats and dogs. In serving humans who are pet owners, they are serving animals. They do this through talking to the prospective adopters on how to care for their new pets, conversing with other pet owners with meetings in the community and writing about pet care tips on our blog to share with our readers.

One of their unique selling points (USP) is that they focus on the positive aspects of pet ownership. By telling the wonderful stories of each animal in their care, as well as the fun, enjoyable aspects of pet ownership, they propagate a feel-good vibe, which in turn benefits the animals in the care of our human readers.

They also believe in building good relationships with humans, not just with animals. By building relationships with the human pet owners, they are paying-it-forward and benefiting the animals they will meet in their circles of influence, be they strays or pets.

Stray cat management

In Ubi, long before Ubi Kuching Project was formed, there have been kind neighbours who feed the stray cats in Ubi daily, as well as sponsor and arrange for stray cats to be sterilised. Each section in Ubi is managed by different carers whom we call cat-patrons, and the sections are known as cat-zones in Ubi. We currently have 5 zones in Ubi that are autonomously managed by these cat-patrons. Love Kuching Project as an entity renders help to the cat-patrons of these zones by offering to help trap stray cats for sterilisation, raising additional external funds for sterilisation to alleviate the cat-patrons, helping to rescue cats in each cat-zone that are in need such as those needing veterinary attention, young kittens and nursing mothers. They are also often called upon by residents of other neighbouring estate to organise sterilisation and rescue programmes to activitate the stray cat management cycle in estates beyond Ubi.



Animal rescue

Apart from strays that are young, sick or abandoned, or at the risk of being culled by pest-control, Love Kuching Project also provides a shelter for re-homing pets. Their volunteers' foster homes give an alternative to owners that may otherwise have to surrender their pets to SPCA. Thus, they also re-home pet cats and dogs that can no longer stay with their owners. They also intervene in households that have irresponsibly planned to abandon their pets, to ensure that the animals go to better homes.

Animal rescue in Love Kuching Project is carried out in structured steps. Because their resources are limited, they cannot rescue every animal, thus, they carry out with is known as triage in our mode of rescue. They focus resources on animals that can be saved and re-homed successfully. Animals that are deemed fit to continue surviving as strays will not be taken in. They also do not focus our resources on animals that are in too serious a condition for them to help due to lack of funding or severe illness and injury - in cases such as these, allowing SPCA to intervene in euthanasia may well be an even better option for the animal.

Because their boarding resources are limited, they have to rely on our volunteers to help foster and care for animals in their custody, as well as on the public to contribute financially through cash donations or donations-in-kind. The Water Dish sponsors cat food monthly towards boarding cats in their custody.

Their boarding costs are at $3 per day per cat.

Pet adoption


Another one of their USPs is that Love Kuching Project believes in rehabilitation of animals before re-homing. This means that they toilet-train the animals if they were strays, bottle-feed and thereafter wean them off milk if they were orphans, socialise them through human interaction, as well as provide a good environment such as toys for them to be emotionally well - this is to ensure they will become good house pets when they are adopted.

They also rehabilitate strays that need time off the streets to recover from stress and illness. Examples include heavily pregnant cats, female cats post-sterilisation, strays that have been sent to the vet and need a place to recover before going back to their territory. These animals may not be able to be re-homed, thus, they will be released in their original territory or in Ubi if no adopters step forward.

While in their care, the cats are fed with premium, grain-free foods and are groomed regularly. They will be given medication when they are ill or taken to the vet.

The main networks used for re-homing is through online advertising anchored by their blog. In our re-homing adverts they believe in capturing the stories of the animals in order to reach out to the human heart. A good story invites humans to emotionally invest in our work.

They screen adopters by making sure that entire families are involved in the adoption process. They also have a written adoption agreement and use photographic evidence to ensure that the adopters are accountable for the animals' welfare. They also invite adopters to send us pictures and updates on the adopted pet and publish these updates on our blog.

Through their blog and their interaction with members of the community they advocate for pet adoption rather than buying pets, which is one of the visions of The Water Dish. This is because we believe that breeding pets for sale is often inhumane because breeding farms are often places of animal abuse, and that pet sales prevents rescued animals from being adopted.

Fundraising for Love Kuching Project

In Love Kuching Project, they have financial needs for 4 main tenets of our work:

1. Seed-funding, which goes towards raising awareness of their work as well as provides capital for more fund-raising

2. Veterinary funding, which acts as a fund we can tap into when they need to provide urgent veterinary attention to animals we rescue

3. Boarding funding, which goes towards the food for the animals that are boarding at Angels Pet Shop

4. Sterilisation funding, which goes towards stray cats that have no sponsor for sterilisation

Fundraising and raising awareness for their work go hand-in-hand. This is because donors and sponsors only give towards causes they feel and believe to be worthwhile and of integrity. Apart from raising awareness of their work in responsible pet ownership, stray cat management through sterilisation, animal rescue and pet adoption, they also need to be accountable to our public. This means representing Kuching Project in a legally responsible way as well as being transparent in their accounting of our income and expenses to the public. Their expenses concur with the ethical rule that no more than 30% of their expenditure goes towards operations and administration, and that minimum of 70% of expenditure goes directly to the animals in the form of pet supplies, sterilisation costs and veterinary expenses.

Adoption

1. Adoption fees for 2010

• Kitten, local breed = $35

• Kitten, pedigree or cross breed = $60

• Adult cat, local breed = $30

• Adult cat, pedigree or cross breed = $65

 Visit Love Kuching Project at www.lovekuchingproject.org