Dead cat found floating in Yishun pond amid 2015 cat-killing scare

A dead cat was found floating in the pond next to Khoo Teck Puat Hospital in Yishun at about 8am on 25 December 2015, spotted by the volunteer group Yishun 326 Tabby Cat, which posted photos of the carcass with other items floating nearby. Police attended the scene, though it was unclear whether the animal had been deliberately killed or had died another way. At that point, 18 other cases of suspected cat abuse had been reported in Yishun over the preceding three months.

The scare kept building into the new year. By 21 January 2016 the tally of suspected cases stood at 21, after another dead cat was found near Block 732 along Yishun Avenue 5. The spate — running across Yishun and Sembawang since September 2015 — prompted Nee Soon GRC MP Louis Ng to mobilise a grassroots "fast response" patrol team, and two men were arrested: Lee Wai Leong, charged with throwing a cat from a 13th-floor flat, and a second alleged abuser whose dead cat came from his own household.

But the official picture that emerged was far less lurid than the headlines. By end-January 2016, the Singapore Police Force and the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority reported 26 cat deaths in Yishun since September, of which only two were confirmed as deliberate abuse. AVA said its post-mortems found no evidence of poisoning or of cats with slit tongues, as some community groups had claimed; most examined cats had injuries consistent with road accidents, falls from height, or natural causes rather than a killer. Local lore was undeterred — the run of deaths helped cement Yishun's tabloid reputation as "The Devil's Ring."

• 28 Dec 2015coconuts.co
• 22 Jan 2016coconuts.co
• 30 Jan 2016theindependent.sg
• 11 Jun 2016bbc.com
• 26 Apr 2018vice.com