(SG): Animals' best friend

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*Animals' best friend*

 

*By John Lui*

 

Ms Deirdre Moss does not have any pets at home. As executive officer of the

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), she walks the talk.

 

She lives alone in a Bukit Timah condominium and, keeping true to one of the

organisation's tenets, does not think it would be fair to have a pet when

she is hardly at home.

 

'It's a huge responsibility and you have to be there for them a certain

amount of time,' she says.

 

As the operational head of Singapore's largest and oldest animal charity for

a quarter of a century, her name has become synonymous with all things

fourfooted, feathered and furry, especially when they become public issues.

 

That is when her letters, with their characteristically cool, dispassionate

tone, appear in The Straits Times Forum pages. Over the years, she has

written dozens of missives. She has spoken out against the killing of a

mouse to advertise the dangers of nicotine, the abuse of dogs slaughtered

for meat and a restaurant's use of a lobster-grabbing machine for sport,

among other topics.

 

And the Australian-born Singapore permanent resident has given her views in

dozens of interviews. Recently, she has welcomed the scrapping of plans for

a whale shark exhibit at Resorts World at Sentosa and spoken out on the cat

poisonings in Bayshore Park.

 

The tone of her letters is deliberate, she says. 'How are you going to sway

people if you sound extreme to them?' she asks.

 

The interview takes place at her office in a building in Mount Vernon Road

that has seen better days. Though clean and well-maintained, the furniture

in the lobby and her office look to be of 1980s vintage.

 

Various SPCA posters are tacked on the walls of her small, neat office on

the ground floor of the two-storey administration building. She has large,

expressive eyes and some grey in her honey-streaked hair.

 

In contrast to the official tone she adopts in print, an edge creeps into

her Australian-accented voice when she talks about the callousness of animal

abusers or about the cavalier attitude of those in the pet trade.

 

And when the questions stray to her personal life, she is visibly and

audibly uncomfortable, but in an instant, she turns charmingly and

effusively apologetic. She would rather talk about the work in the

organisation, she says.

 

Large swathes of her life are off-limits: Much of her childhood in

Australia, her marriage in Singapore and subsequent divorce and whether she

is seeing someone.

 

Those who know her speak of her as a private person who can appear reserved

until she feels they have earned her trust.

 

The field of animal activism has changed in the last decade. Partly in

reaction to the SPCA and Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore's

(AVA) policy of putting down their unwanted charges, small non-profit groups

have formed to find other solutions to the problem of strays and unwanted

pets. Advocacy, sterilisation and permanent rehousing are their preferred

methods.

 

On the Internet, the SPCA and AVA in general, and sometimes Ms Moss in

particular, have come under fire for using euthanasia. A former SPCA

volunteer, who declined to be named, joined a 'no-kill' group, saying she

left the SPCA because she felt the organisation was not doing enough to

house and feed animals during their natural lifespan.

 

She has in the past welcomed the rise of these welfare groups, but she

sounds upset and also weary when the accusations are put to her, such as the

one that the SPCA conducts a stray animal elimination service.

 

'I want to make it clear that it is not the SPCA's job to round up strays,'

she says. It will go out to rescue animals in distress, but not hunt down

healthy strays, she adds. The group also counsels those surrendering animals

to make sure they know the consequences of turning them in and asks if they

have exhausted all alternatives.

 

She also points out that the shelter takes in between 600 and 1,000 animals

a month, with only between 10 and 20 per cent being adopted by new owners.

 

If it were to permanently house the rest of the animals, it would have to

start turning others away.

 

'If we were to say, 'We're full up, we don't have space', a lot of animals

will probably get dumped in the streets,' she says.

 

Today, the SPCA's shelter houses up to 170 animals at a time, comprising

mainly dogs, cats and small animals such as guinea pigs, hamsters and

rabbits.

 

She adds that putting resources into life-time animal housing sends the

wrong message that the SPCA is the first resort for those who want to be rid

of their pets, rather than the last.

 

But the issue which draws much of her ire is that of Singaporeans who buy,

then dump pets. There is a clear exasperation in her voice when she talks

about those who breed and sell pets indiscriminately, and those who buy

them, only to give them up afterwards.

 

'More pet shops have sprouted up and there is more commercial breeding. For

a small island, we have tons of pet shops and breeders. Pets are too easy to

buy. That's why they are consumer items, like furniture.'

 

Out of over 100 dogs surrendered or taken in by SPCA last month, only 31

were adopted. Those not adopted had to be put down to make way for fresh

intake.

 

It is a dispiriting task - taking in unwanted animals and putting them down.

It would be easy for Ms Moss to feel sorry for herself. 'But I have to cope

because if I don't do it, who else will?'

 

A friend, Ms Deborah Barker, a lawyer in her 50s, says that her job is

'stressful'.

 

'The SPCA makes the practical decision to put down some animals. Then they

are exposed to extreme animal rights groups who condemn them on the

Internet,' she says.

 

Ms Barker's sister, Carla, is vice-chairman of the SPCA's management

committee.

 

As the public face of the organisation in Singapore, Ms Moss is easily the

target of criticism, but she rolls with the punches, adds Ms Barker.

 

'She has strong feeling about it, but I don't think she lets it overwhelm

her. She could not carry on if she did.'

 

Ms Mary Soo, 62, chairman of the SPCA, has known Ms Moss for 25 years and is

aware of how resourceful she can be when championing the cause of animals.

Recently, Ms Soo was told that a small cat was trapped in a locked,

abandoned house in a zone slated for redevelopment. The cat lovers who found

it had turned to the authorities, but nothing could be done as the home was

private property and no one knew who the owners were.

 

When Ms Moss was told of the situation, she tracked down the contractor even

though it was a weekend and got him to free the cat.

 

'The cat's feeders were so happy that it was freed,' says Ms Soo.

 

There are now 14 members of staff at the shelter arm. Ms Moss imagines that

if government policy and responsible pet owning behaviour were to suddenly

be in place to reduce the burden on the shelter, the SPCA could re-allocate

staff and resources to its core mission of promoting kindness through

education and reducing suffering through sterilisation, investigation and

rescues.

 

'What a dream that would be,' she says, smiling.

 

When she is not working, she unwinds with friends over dinner and also swims

and watches videos. The Catholic goes to mass on Sundays and sometimes on

weekdays.

 

There was little in her early life to indicate that she would turn out to be

an articulate defender of animals and an organisation's leader.

 

She was born to Johannah O'Neill, who had migrated to Australia from

Ireland, and Eurasian-Singaporean Denis D'Cotta. Mr Justice D'Cotta, one of

the more prominent members of Singapore's Eurasian community, rose to the

post of High Court judge in 1970 and retired in 1981. He died in 1983 in

Melbourne, where he had been living since retirement. Her mother, a

psychiatric nurse, died in 1999.

 

Ms Moss has one brother, Denis Jr, who is a year older, living in Brisbane

where he is a ship chartering manager for a major grain trading house in

Australia.

 

She attended several schools around Australia before doing her A levels in

English, French, music and Bible studies at a boarding school for girls,

Presentation Convent, in Melbourne. She got married, came to Singapore and

worked at various jobs before volunteering at the SPCA in 1983, driven by

her love of animals.

 

'I liked it. I had a real purpose in life,' she says.

 

She found her niche and was soon volunteering almost every day as a

receptionist at the veterinary clinic.

 

Her dedication was noticed and she was offered a spot on the management

committee. After the former head left for England, she was offered the top

job in 1984.

 

In her first year, there were 10 full-time employees. Today there are 34.

Its 11-person management committee used to be dominated by expatriates but

now the team is overwhelmingly Singaporean. The society is a registered

charity and raised $2.36 million last year, mainly from public donations.

 

The lease on its roughly 0.37ha plot in Mount Vernon Road, allocated by the

government at a nominal rent when the organisation moved out of its Orchard

Road premises in 1984, will expire in 2012. The group is looking for a new

site and would have to pay for the construction cost and lease.

 

The costs, which will run into the millions, will use up much of the

reserves which the group has been setting aside for the purpose.

 

After being with the SPCA for more than 20 years, Ms Moss admits she has not

given much thought to what she will do after retirement. She still holds

Australian citizenship. She may move back to Australia or remain here if she

finds a new job.

 

'I love Asia. I think my heart is more here than anywhere else.'

 

The time is drawing near for a new executive officer, she acknowledges.

While she is happy that the organisation is satisfied enough with her

performance to have kept her on as an employee for such a long period, she

would be pleased if her successor was found before the move to the new

building.

 

'The days are flying by,' she says. No successor has yet been named, but the

group is actively looking.

 

'It would be time, it would definitely be time,' she says of the leadership

change.

 

'Some might say 25 years is too long already and she should be out of there.

And I would not argue with that. I would not argue with that at all,' she

says with a laugh.

 

 

 

*This article was first published in The Straits

Times<http://www.straitstimes.com/>

..*

 

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