28/12/2025
★ ✰ This Singapore Marriage Counsellor Is Selling Her Car To Help Fund A Quest To Save JB's Street Cats ✰ ★
On a Saturday morning during the December school holidays, I sat in a car inching along a jammed Causeway, en route to Johor Bahru (JB) in Malaysia.
Instead of shopping, eating or one of the many leisure activities available in the city, on this day I was tagging along on a mission: feeding starving stray cats.
My mission leader: Ms Nur Amira Jumali, 34, a Singaporean marriage counsellor at a non-profit organisation by day and cat benefactor at all other hours.
She apologised for making me share the backseat with a precarious pile of cat supplies – but given that her car boot was already filled to overflowing with even more cat supplies, there was little to be done.
This was a mini-expedition for me, but for Ms Amira, it's a weekly routine she has kept up with almost religiously since late 2022. Back then, her plan for what she calls "this JB cat thing" had been simply to feed strays and conduct small-scale trap-neuter-return (TNR) exercises.
Now, she runs a shelter that houses more than 80 cats – way over its intended capacity of 50. She also financially supports more than 50 other cats spread out over the veterinary clinic and various fosterers, on top of doing monthly TNR exercises.
While there are no official figures for the stray cat population in JB, a 2021 estimate by Mordor Intelligence put the number of cats in Malaysia at about five million. An earlier 2019 estimate indicated that only about 658,000 cats in the country were owned by humans.
Ms Amira put the number of cats that she has helped in the last three years to be at least 1,000. This didn't come cheap, though. She figured that the amount spent so far on these efforts may be in the tens of thousands of Singapore dollars.
☆ "I KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE" ☆
It was a bit of a curveball when the self-professed "crazy cat lady" confessed that she had not grown up loving cats.
Having been brought up without any pets, her interest was piqued during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 by a slew of cat posts online. This was when she adopted her first feline.
When she found out by chance that one of her counselling clients had too many cats at home, she immediately took in two of them and paid for the other cats' sterilisations.
She began contributing whenever she saw animal-related donation appeals online. She set up a separate bank account, which she labelled "projecthelpmeow" – the name her cat welfare efforts are known by – and set aside a portion of her monthly salary to put into this account.
Sometime in late 2022, a friend took her to JB to procure cheaper pet supplies for her own cats. Not being a frequent visitor to JB, she was taken aback by the state of the stray animals there. "I saw so many unsterilised cats, kittens everywhere, malnourished cats, pregnant cats," she said.
She fed as many as she could that day – about two dozen – but she knew it would ultimately be more effective to control the stray population the way cat welfare groups and shelters do in Singapore, through sterilisation.
However, any further plans of action had to be shelved as she was tied up completing her master's degree in counselling at the time.
In January 2023, on another sojourn to JB, she came across a box of about 10 newly abandoned kittens. She posted photos of them online, hoping that a kindhearted local would take them in.
She told me that despite the post "going viral", she returned a week later to find the cats unadopted. Sadly, a few had died. She took it upon herself to get the rest sterilised. The next month, she started doing frequent TNRs for other strays in the area.
Being familiar with the cat welfare scene in Singapore, I'm aware that despite online outreach efforts, many animals in need simply never get adopted. While do-gooders can and do sometimes take things into their own hands, Ms Amira's situation is not so simple, given that she's not even based in Malaysia.
I asked why she did not simply continue spreading the word online, rather than going so far out of her way. "I know how it feels to not know when my next meal will be," she said.
Growing up, there were days she walked more than half an hour to her polytechnic for classes because she had no money for the bus fare. On one occasion, she recalls how finding S$2 (about US$1.60) on the floor "felt like striking a lottery". She used it to buy snacks to last her a few days.
Such experiences, she said, had motivated her to take up work in the social services sector, and help the cats to the best of her ability.
"Whenever I come across someone or som**hing in need, I feel compelled to take action instead of waiting around."
☆ THE COST OF CHARITY ☆
When we arrived in JB, the moment Ms Amira alighted from her car at one of the usual spots where she routinely feeds cats, a couple of cats were already approaching her.
They were clearly familiar with her, meowing expectantly as she swiftly dished out wet food, filled up a big container of dry kibble and refilled a big bowl of water. Within an hour, she had fed about two dozen cats, each one skinnier than the last.
As they ate, she carefully checked each one for any visible signs of sickness, injury and whether their ears were tipped – an indicator of whether they had been neutered or not. With the help of a friend who arrived a few hours later, she trapped six of them for neutering and medical attention.
When the food that she had packed into the market trolley ran out, she went to buy more from a nearby pet shop. I could not follow as I had a lapful of three strays all asking for affection.
Ms Amira's monthly expenses for her cat mission have ballooned through the years, from an average of about S$1,000 a month in 2023 to close to S$3,000 monthly now – a mix of public donations and her own funds.
Still to come: a veterinarian's bill for this whole year's TNR efforts and related medical expenses for the cats, which she reckoned would come to "at least S$10,000".
On top of that is the roughly S$10,000 she spent on building and renovating a shelter last year for cats that the vet advised against re-releasing into the streets.
Ms Amira is planning to move operations out of the current shelter and build a bigger one in order to house more strays – an endeavour she estimated would cost her at least S$200,000. This includes the cost of buying a small plot of land; renting space is out of the question because she does not want to risk eviction.
"I'm thinking long-term," she said.
So far, Ms Amira has managed to finance her operation by digging into her own savings, forgoing holidays and selling money envelopes during Hari Raya.
She prefers this over just making public appeals for donations – which she rarely does, she said – because she believes in putting in her own efforts to support her own welfare project.
She also feels guilty about "diverting" donations from the many feeders and rescuers in Singapore who are also in dire need. Just this month, she set up her own online pet supplies shop, Supermarcat, to bring in more money for her JB cat operation.
And her biggest endeavour yet: selling her car.
"I had planned to keep driving my car until the end of the COE, but priorities have changed," she said, referring to the validity of the Certificate of Entitlement needed to own a car in Singapore.
She hopes the money raised from selling her car will help achieve her fundraising goals a lot faster, though she acknowledged that she will probably have to "rely on my friends' kindness" to make her routine sojourns to JB with cat supplies in tow.
☆ SACRIFICING DREAMS AND AMBITIONS ☆
The never-ending toll on her bank account is just the beginning of the many sacrifices Ms Amira is making for her cause.
First, between her full-time job and the cat shelter, she has almost no time for rest or leisure.
After a long day of counselling – which, she said, is often "emotionally draining" – she spends each evening working on her online shop or the shelter and liaising with the vet clinic on ongoing cases.
Her weekly trips to JB burn through most of her weekends, too. She typically sets off from her home in Punggol early in the morning to feed strays, buy cat supplies, clean the shelter and tend to its occupants before returning home around midnight.
"I don't have a social life," she said plainly.
She had also planned to pursue a PhD after completing her master's. But now, she has neither the time nor the capacity.
"I'm not saying that this is a bad thing … but there's still that sense of loss. Like, you work so hard, (then) som**hing else happens and changes life's course."
Her story is reminiscent of those of many other cat helpers I have spoken to in Singapore. Very often, such a journey may start by chance but snowballs rapidly beyond one's expectations – with seemingly no way out.
Despite the inroads Ms Amira has made, her task appears to be a Sisyphean one. The day we visited JB, shop workers in the vicinity lamented to her about sightings of new stray cats.
"I would like to believe it's just a postponement," she said of her plans to further her studies. "But I don't see how I can continue in the very near future if I have to do everything myself."
Ms Amira counts her blessings for the community support that she does get: A cat supplier in Singapore who occasionally donates cat food, as well as a pet food supplier and a vet clinic in JB that give her preferential rates.
Most of the help she has received comes from Singaporeans, including donors and some regulars who tag along on her monthly TNR trips.
Ms Rashida Hakimin, 32, a Malaysian who now manages Ms Amira's shelter, said that she had already been helping cats on her own dime for the last 10 years – fostering strays in the most dire situations and sterilising two to three cats a month.
For her, it was "destiny" that she came across Ms Amira's social media posts in early 2023, when she herself was running low on funds to help the cats.
It's a "great relief" for Ms Rashida now that she and Ms Amira can pool their resources to help even more stray cats in need. "The burden I felt, I now don't have to shoulder it alone."
Hardly any other Malaysians have offered Ms Amira help dealing with the problem in their own backyard. Instead of support, she often receives negative feedback and comments online.
Some online users chide her for going "against nature" by sterilising cats and depriving them of the basic ability to procreate. This is despite guidance from the Islamic religious authorities in Singapore, Selangor and the Federal Territories of Malaysia stating that the neutering of animals is permissible to prevent harm.
"If we don't (neuter), more kittens will be born on the streets and have to live a life of suffering," she said.
Shortly after she said this, a young stray dashed across the road and narrowly missed being hit by a car, demonstrating the real dangers that cats face on the streets. Ms Amira occasionally receives demands from members of the public to rescue stray cats from the streets.
"They will say things like, 'You raise funds from the public and now, you cannot even tend to a request from the public?'," she said.
Expecting me to rescue the cats when I do not have the capacity is really heartbreaking, because I really want to help. And I feel so bad, because I can't.
"Expecting me to rescue the cats when I do not have the capacity is really heartbreaking, because I really want to help. And I feel so bad, because I can't."
Ms Amira hopes to find a partner to bring on board so that she can help more cats, more sustainably. At the very least, she said, she would be able to visit JB every alternate week instead.
Till then, she relies on her own grit and passion for living creatures to keep her going. "There are moments when I feel like I can't do this anymore. It's super tiring," she confessed.
"But if I were to give up on the cats, nobody else would step up and make sure they're okay. And I don't believe in abandoning those that need me the most." ❣
Three years ago, Ms Nur Amira Jumali went to Johor Bahru to buy more affordable supplies for her own pet cats. Today, almost singlehandedly, she manages a project helping more than 1,000 stray felines in Johor state.
