Man fined for abandoning 8 cats at HDB bin centre after telling wife he was taking them to animal shelter

SINGAPORE — Ahead of an inspection by Housing and Development Board (HDB) officers, a 37-year-old man whose wife kept more than 20 cats at home told her he would take some of their cats to an animal shelter.

Muhammad Al-Imran M Roslan put eight cats into a cage, but instead of taking them to a shelter, he drove them to an HDB bin centre and released them.

Al-Imran was on Wednesday (Aug 31) fined S$4,500 after he pleaded guilty in a district court to two counts of pet abandonment. Six similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.

He was also disqualified from owning pets for 12 months.

The court heard that in January this year, Al-Imran got a call from HDB over complaints of “strong foul smells” coming from his unit.

Al-Imran was told to “act on it” and that an inspection would be conducted in two weeks, said National Parks Board (NParks) prosecutor Wendy Tan.

HDB does not allow cats to be kept in a flat. Its website states that cats are generally hard to contain within the flat and can cause inconvenience to neighbours when allowed to roam freely.

As the date of inspection was nearing, Al-Imran decided that some of the cats had to go.

On Jan 23, after telling his wife at the time that he was going to give some of them to a shelter, he put eight cats into a black cage he had bought online and loaded it onto a rented van.

He then drove to Block 462 Choa Chu Kang Avenue 4 and released them near the bin centre at about 5.50pm.

About an hour later, NParks got word about the abandoned cats. Officers from the statutory board arrived at the location and rescued seven domestic short hair cats.

Al-Imran later confessed to abandoning them, which the prosecutor said was done without “reasonable cause or excuse”. 

The last cat was never found.

On Wednesday, Al-Imran told the court that he had tried to reach out to the animal shelters but claimed all of them told him they were full and unable to accept his cats.

He said that he had also reached out to some cat rescuers. Instead of offering help, one of them whom he contacted on Facebook had rebuked him for being an irresponsible pet owner for allowing his cats to breed, he added.

Al-Imran said that his wife was “nonchalant” over the whole ordeal. 

“I was panicked and lost. That’s why I did the stupid act of cat abandonment,” he said. “The night itself, I went to find the cats but I was unable to.”

He added: “It had weighed on me pretty badly… I would like Your Honour to factor in that I am already remorseful of my own accord.”

For each count of abandoning an animal without reasonable cause or excuse under the Animal and Birds Act, Al-Imran could have been jailed up to 12 months or fined up to S$10,000, or both.