[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/lessons-from-my-pets\/#NewsArticle","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/lessons-from-my-pets\/","headline":"Lessons from my pets","name":"Lessons from my pets","description":"Good things come to those who wait\u00a0 Tuti and Yuki are a feline duo with incredible amounts of patience.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s an area in the house where we do our shoots and make them wear clothes. So when we go there, Tuti and Yuki will follow us and let us do whatever we want to do […]","datePublished":"2021-10-07","dateModified":"2022-04-16","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/author\/rachel-teng\/#Person","name":"Rachel Teng","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/author\/rachel-teng\/","identifier":367,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rachel_Teng-100x100.jpg","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rachel_Teng-100x100.jpg","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"TheHomeGround Asia","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo_2021-07-22-222533.jpeg","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo_2021-07-22-222533.jpeg","width":640,"height":640}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/S3-Feature-1280-X-626-px-25.jpg","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/S3-Feature-1280-X-626-px-25.jpg","height":626,"width":1280},"url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/lessons-from-my-pets\/","about":["Community","Health & Wellness","Local","Singapore"],"wordCount":1623,"keywords":["animal welfare","bird","cat","dog","hamster","lessons","life","love","pet","pet ownership"],"articleBody":"Good things come to those who wait\u00a0Tuti and Yuki are a feline duo with incredible amounts of patience.\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s an area in the house where we do our shoots and make them wear clothes. So when we go there, Tuti and Yuki will follow us and let us do whatever we want to do with them for up to an hour at a time,\u201d says their owner and social media manager, Hani.Despite Tuti\u2019s grumpy disposition, she doesn\u2019t get impatient or angry, because she knows there\u2019s a big treat waiting for her at the end.To date, the American shorthair-Persian and Bengal-British longhair have 3.3 million followers on TikTok. Yuki is famously known for her speech-like abilities, accompanied by cleverly crafted subtitles.\u00a0\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\u201cShe\u2019s very vocal. When you say something to her, she\u2019ll just meow back at you,\u201d says Hani. \u201cSo we thought, hey, why not just add words? We didn\u2019t expect this kind of response.\u201d\u00a0To some extent, these words may have been inspired by Yuki herself. \u201cSometimes when I\u2019m crying, she\u2019ll come up to me and just start meowing in my face. I\u2019ve never seen a cat like her before, actually,\u201d she adds.To stay curious, fearless, and grateful\u00a0Aina, 23, has had parrots in her life ever since she could remember. Now, she\u2019s a proud \u201cparront\u201d of seven feathered friends \u2014 the oldest of the lot is even older than her.\u00a0\u201cPerhaps something that people wouldn\u2019t know is that parrots require a lot of attention,\u201d she says, emphasising that it\u2019s not as simple as buying them from a store and leaving them in their cages.\u00a0\ufeff\ufeff\u201cThey\u2019re very sociable so you have to be very present in their lives, otherwise they can get bored and start plucking their feathers,\u201d she adds. \u201cTheir mental health is something that we have to take into consideration.\u201dAccording to Aina, these highly curious and persistent creatures often go where they shouldn\u2019t. The social work undergraduate finds these traits to be a relevant reminder in her line of work.\u00a0\u201cCuriosity is an important attribute for social workers. We have to be very attentive so that we can find out more about the client and how to best help them,\u201d she says.\u00a0Her lovebirds in particular approach life with a fearless attitude. \u201cThey don\u2019t seem to know how small they are. They could stand beside my red lory, or perhaps even a macaw, and still would have no sense of fear,\u201d says Aina.\u00a0At the same time, however, she highlights that unlike cats or dogs, birds take longer to warm up to strangers. \u201cYou can\u2019t expect them to be close to you, or to be able to pet them immediately,\u201d she adds. Being prey, flighty fellows require more trust-building and engagement, even with their owners.Aina and her two brothers have a nighttime routine for what they now call their kindergarten. They\u2019ll clean the cages and tell them \u201cbye-bye\u201d or \u201cgoodnight\u201d. In response, their red lory, Loro, would respond with kissing sounds.\u00a0It\u2019s a two-way conversation. \u201cSome days, I rush home just to clean Loro\u2019s cage, and he would say thank you,\u201d she says. \u201cHim being able to express his gratitude really touches my heart, especially at the end of long days when I\u2019m already very tired.\u201d\u00a0\ufeffSaving for the rainy days\u00a0Janice\u2019s daughter Cheryl initially wanted a cat for her first pet, but she wanted to teach her responsibility first.\u00a0\u201cA cat has a lifespan of seven years, so we first went with a smaller commitment instead,\u201d she says. They thus adopted a dwarf-winter white hamster from the Hamster Society Singapore.\u00a0Hamsters have a two-year average lifespan, and they named this one Cherish. \u201cWe hope the name reminds Cheryl to cherish the time we have with our loved ones while they\u2019re still around,\u201d she explains.\u00a0Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, home-based learning has become a regular occurrence over the past year. The family of three has thus bonded over cage cleaning and observing the behaviours of their furball of a companion.\u00a0For instance, they realised that hamsters actually like to store food in their mouths. \u201cThis gives me a chance to tell my daughter that we need to plan ahead for the rainy days,\u201d says Janice.\u00a0\u201cThings are extra chaotic now, especially amid the pandemic. We have to take care of ourselves.\u201d\u00a0\ufeff\ufeff\ufeffStuck together in lockdown\u00a0According to YT, her two dogs are almost complete opposites \u2014 but together, they bring her balance and joy.\u00a0\u00a0Kiyo, a 12.5-year-old cocker spaniel-Japanese spitz cross has been termed by her loving owner YT as \u201cthe OG Good Girl\u201d. \u201cShe\u2019s innocent, pretty foggy, and very accident-prone,\u201d says YT. \u201cShe\u2019s quite like me in that sense, because I\u2019m very clumsy as well.\u201d\u00a0For YT and her husband Keith, Kiyo was the first dog that they got together, and symbolic of something that they\u2019ve both wanted in their lives for a long time. The realisation that Kiyo was getting older and that she lacked good-quality photos even kickstarted her passion for photography.\u00a0\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\u201cKiyo has this live-in-the-moment type nature, which has been quite reassuring. Nothing can go wrong in her world as long as she has the right people around, which are just my husband and me,\u201d she says.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s sort of naive, but a wholesome way to think. When I\u2019m having a tough day, I\u2019m reminded that we\u2019re still all at home together as a family. And it\u2019s all good,\u201d she adds.\u00a0In contrast, her pomeranian-husky, Miya is careful and selective, in an almost cat-like way.\u00a0 \u201cShe\u2019s very deliberate in her actions, and very smart, and surprisingly active \u2014 unlike me!\u201d says YT.\u00a0\u201cMiya was a good way of staying mentally occupied despite being stuck at home,\u201d she says. Having to work within the confines of the four walls, YT was pushed to be a little bit more creative with how to engage the trick-loving 3-year-old.\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cSome days when I\u2019m upset, she would come up to me for no other reason than to rest her head on me. It\u2019s a great reminder for me that life is more than just about the screens that I\u2019m staring at,\u201d she adds.\u00a0Animals can have emotional baggage too\u00a0Owner Lee never knew that dogs could have separation anxiety until she had Horlicks. \u201cI don\u2019t think my previous dog had as many feelings. The way Horlicks sees things is very different,\u2019 she says.\u00a0As a Singaporean living alone in Australia, Lee originally wanted a guard dog for security. But the first day she met Horlicks, he jumped into her car and wanted to follow her home. She took that as a sign and took the 17-month-old golden retriever pup in.\u00a0He was underfed, and very probably mistreated by his previous two owners \u2014 seeing as how he would run off and hide when Lee takes out a broom or mop when doing housework.\u00a0When Lee left the house to get groceries, her neighbours noticed that Horlicks sits behind the front door, unmoving until she gets back. \u201cThe vet told me that some dogs can indeed have separation anxiety, and for Horlicks, it was probably because he didn\u2019t have a good sense of security after being rehomed thrice,\u201d she says.\u00a0\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\ufeffAt one point, Lee had to return to Singapore when her mother was unwell. Her dad joked that Horlicks wasn\u2019t going to want to come home with her when she got back after three long months. \u201cThat joke actually terrified and worried me, because his sitters really pampered him as well,\u201d she adds.\u00a0But as soon as she saw him again, Horlicks was so excited that he literally wet the floor. The sitters told her that he would get into distress mode when they played a video with her voice in the background, and he couldn\u2019t find her.\u00a0For Lee, it was a good reminder that pets could have emotional baggage as well. \u201cHe\u2019s been with me for almost seven years now, but every time I leave, he thinks he\u2019s being rehomed,\u201d she says. \u201cI think deep down he still has deep-seated abandonment issues,\u201d she says.\u00a0\ufeffIt takes courage, but we can trust again\u00a0A passionate foster parent for non-profit organisation Project Luni, Sherrie currently houses a party of five dogs and cats.\u00a0Her permanent adoption, Xena, was found abandoned in an ulu area with no residential apartments in the vicinity. \u201cShe was super hungry and skinny when the rescuer found her, and I decided to take her in after the passing of my two previous cats,\u201d she says.Xena is suspected to have been deliberately abandoned due to her medical issues \u2014\u00a0pyometra and some stomach ulcers.\u00a0After dedicated love and care, however, she is getting by healthily and happily today. Amid the 30-odd fosters that have come and gone under Sherrie\u2019s foster care, Xena remains blissfully nonchalant.\u00a0\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\ufeffAll of Sherrie\u2019s fosters came from horrible backgrounds, having either been abandoned, abused, or caged up for most of their lives. Yet, she finds strength in the way they all come out of their shells eventually.\u00a0\u201cThe first few days with them will always be a little tough because they might be frightened by unfamiliar environments and people,\u201d she says. \u201cBut with love and patience, they all gradually become very sweet and trusting.\u201d\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s almost like the past doesn\u2019t matter anymore. They don\u2019t hate other humans forever just because they\u2019ve had some bad run-ins with some of us,\u201d she adds.\ufeff\ufeffJoin the conversations on TheHomeGround Asia’s Facebook and Instagram, and get the latest updates via Telegram.\u00a0"},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Destinations","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Singapore","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/\/singapore\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Lessons from my pets","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/lessons-from-my-pets\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]