CWS conducted an online survey in October 2025 to better understand the profile of cat fosterers in Singapore and the challenges they face in the important work they do for our Singapore cats.
Who is a cat fosterer?
A cat fosterer is an individual who cares for cats in their personal capacity on a temporary basis. The most common reasons are that the cat in question is going to be rehomed or is receiving some medical care, but there are cases of long-term fostering for provision of long-term medical or palliative care.
It should be noted that fosterers are not cat owners in that they do not have “ownership” rights over the animal. Instead they are more like guardians, similar to community cat caregivers, who are providing care for the animal in their custody.
To the extent that fosterers provide care in their own homes, they would be held to the same standards as cat owners such as ensuring a cat-proof environment, keeping the cats strictly indoors, etc. CWS strongly believes in this common standard for two reasons:
- The standards are set to provide the best outcome for the cat and should not be deviated from without a proper reason; and
- The standards are a self-check mechanism for everyone with a cat in their care – if they are struggling or unable to adhere to the standards, then they should not increase the number of animals in their care.
Respondents
CWS received 75 responses that were reviewed in full and then aggregated. We removed all responses with fake phone numbers (we see you 12345 random responders.)
Findings
The impact of responsible fosterers is remarkable and absolutely cannot be overstated. The statistics speak to this – just within the 75 respondents, more than 2000 cats had been fostered and given a safe space, and in many cases a chance at a permanent home. The burden of care is significant. Every 5 in 10 fosters regularly cared for 3 or more fosters while every 1 in 10 cared for more than 10 fosters at the same time.
Three in every four respondents lived in public housing.
The burden of care can be overwhelming
The sheer volume of help that the fosterers provide can be seen from this: More than 75% of cat fosterers stated that they received at least one request for help to foster cats each month. This seems quite reasonable, understandable even – once you become known as the “cat friend” in your circles, people do start asking you for help on cat-related issues.
But when more than 10% of respondents say they receive at least five requests for help every month, and 75% of all the requests received are to help many cats per request (e.g. a mother and litter of kittens) instead of just 1 cat AND over 50% of the fosterers were helping cats that were experiencing medical issues – we must stop and question: Where are all these needy cats coming from and how do we stop them from being placed in a position that needs rescuing?
Cat fosterers take on the foster cats at personal cost – not just monies for daily care and medical expenses, but time, space and emotional capacity as well.
Responsible Rehoming to Responsible Homes
The responding fosterers have stated that they adhere to CWS responsible cat ownership guidelines for both pet and foster cats. 100% of all cat fosterers keep their cats indoors at all times, nearly 100% have sterilized the foster cats that can be sterilized at point of response and adhere to cat proofing with the lowest compliance being on microchipping, which hovered at about 80% (see further down the article to understand why).
Their knowledge and adherence means that they screen the potential adopters by the same measures. This is incredibly important to ensure that the rehomed cats/kittens do not end up becoming neglected or abandoned and then falling back into the cycle of needing rescue, medical attention and so on.
This directly translates to an increased standard of care for the adopted cats. The screening process is not a paper exercise, it is an involved conversation between rehomer and potential adopter educating a potential adopter on the financial and time outlay for caring for the cats through their whole lives, working through home securitizing options, taking the time out for a time visit and ensuring the whole family is on board, amongst others.
This investment of time is necessary to reduce the likelihood of families being ill-prepared for the costs or leaving their animals unsterilized thereby causing an overpopulation in the home with everything leading to abandonment.
Fosterers do not undertake such screening because it’s easy. They do it to ensure quality of the home. And they do this despite understanding that responsible homes can be hard to get. More than 75% of the fosterers stated they faced difficulties with finding adopters – be it a technological barrier or even the full suitability of the potential adopter. It’s easy to see how this will continue to be an issue for as long as there are more cats than homes.
Pain Points and how YOU can help
The three primary pain points identified by the fosterers were (a) money, (b) time and (c) finding homes. This is no surprise.
On money, anyone can contribute cash or donate items toward fosterers, and caregivers to reduce their overall outlay. It is incumbent on the donor to do their research and donate to a person who can corroborate their expenses with receipts and such. Donation of items in kind would require matching of certain brands for food or litter, but could also be something like unused (or if your cat is like mine, ignored) cat condos or scratchers for cats in fostercare.
On time, this would need to be offered in a non-invasive way to actually alleviate the burden. For example, helping drive the fosterer and cat to an adoption drive and back, spending an hour to take pictures of all the cats in foster care or collating all the medical information and filing it for fosters to track their charges better.
On adoptions, the key help that every fosterer would appreciate is to help increase the number of homes for the rescues – become personal advocates for adoption and not purchases of cats, educate friends and family on how to cat-proof a home for example and show them that adoption is not a difficult process, it is a process put in place to identify adopters who are maybe not ready yet, or just plain unsuitable at this point.
The Impact of the Cat Management Framework
The Cat Management Framework has added to the burdens of fosterers. The main concerns voiced were in respect of
(a) the impact of the limitation on number of pet cats in the house; and
(b) the mandating of microchipping and licensing
We share our thoughts too on why –
Limitations on number of pet cats
The Cat Management Framework has limited the number of pet cats to 2 in public housing, and 3 in private housing, since 1 September 2024.
This means that since 1 September 2024:
(a) An existing cat owner who already had more than 2 or 3 cats in
public or private housing respectively would not be able to adopt
anymore cats; and
(b) A new cat owner who had 0 cats to start with would only be allowed to adopt a maximum of 2 or 3 cats in public or private housing respectively.
Instantly, the pool of adopters dried up because of an arbitrary threshold with no consideration given to whether that adopter could actually afford to care for an additional cat/kitten.
But the number of
needy cats did not decrease – as our survey showed, many fosterers were
still receiving numerous requests for help for numerous homes. Cats are
still entering the rescue pipeline but instead
of trying to find more outlets, the Framework slowed the tap to a
trickle.
It would appear that this decision was made on the misguided premise that the lifting of the ban on cat ownership in homes would suddenly cause people would start adopting cats; like that was the only deterrent. The fact is that many people owned cats before the legalization of cat ownership in HDBs. There was just had no common standard to hold all cat owners to or any way to punish an irresponsible cat owner who was causing issues to his neighbours without also penalizing a responsible cat owner who did not cause disamenities for engaging in “illegal” activity. The Framework caught up to reality; it did not redefine it.
Mandating of microchipping and licensing
The second area of concern is on microchipping and licensing – a step that is now mandatory for pet cats and community cats. In principle, microchipping and licensing is supported by the fosterers because they promote accountability and traceability.
However, 15 months into the Framework, there is still no guidance on how fosters cats are to be accounted for, or how their presence in a fosterer’s home affects their own pet cats.
Foster cats who live in a limbo space where they are likely kept within home but are not meant to be the fosterer’s pet cat as they are marked for rehoming or medical care or palliative care. The sheer number of foster cats under care means there is even more logistics and time and cost involved in running back and forth for microchipping and the very real administrative burden of licensing and registration in a system that only recognizes pet or community cats still.
Other concerns raised
The other concerns raised related to the two primary concerns – first that compliance costs should be imposed on adopters and not fosterers, and second the pressing need for clarity of expectation for fosterers if a potential adopter reneges on their microchipping and licensing
How now brown cow
So what is needed for fosterers to be meaningfully aided so that they can continue to contribute to the welfare of our Singapore cats? From each and everyone of us, an assessment on how we can contribute to reduce the cost and time outlay for them, and advocate for adoptions from responsible fosterers over purchases.
More importantly, clarity from the authorities on:
- Whether cat owners will be allowed to have a greater number of pet cats in their home than the stipulated threshold if they are able to demonstrate that they are responsible and can undertake the additional costs, etc
- Whether cat owners will be allowed to have a greater number of cats, i.e pets plus fosters, in their home than the stipulated threshold if they are able to demonstrate that they are responsible and can undertake the additional costs, etc
- If a threshold is in fact set, whether this can also be increased on a case-by-case basis