Singapore Adventure

Monday, February 06, 2006

Mutant Cats
by venitha

"What kind of psycho goes around chopping off cats' tails?"

A friend here laughed at this, his initial impression of Singapore. What a relief it was to discover that it's merely a mutant gene that afflicts the island's feline population and not the local version of . Or Singapore's epicurial twist on the ever-popular Chinese oxtail soup. Or an economical alternative to the aphrodisiacal .

You laugh, or perhaps you just ponder whether aphrodisiacal is actually a word (it is) and how you pronounce it (just like you think if you don't think too hard), but even in this, the heyday of Viagra, the Chinese prefer herbal remedies and anyway, you'd be surprised how much I pay for prescription drugs here. Economical alternatives are definitely of interest, though I can fortunately not speak personally to Viagra's local price.

At the Time of the Psycho Cattail Chopper, I was busy cooking up my own initial impression of Singapore. I hadn't even noticed the strange bobbed tails of the local cats, though I was glad to have the issue cleared up in advance. Who knows what other theories my overactive imagination would have served up alongside the potent brew of jetlag and insomnia.

Today, jetlag is a distant memory and, thanks to those pricey prescription drugs, even insomnia is held at bay. Yet as I wait in the harsh afternoon sun for the green man to allow me across the street, I snap pictures of the stray cat hogging the shade beside me, and I wonder, as only the wife of someone who loves bad, and I mean really bad, movies can: Are mutants truly preferable to psychos?

My fellow pedestrians vote a silent but resounding "Yes!" by edging closer to the mutant cat and further from the psycho ang moh cat butt photographer.

venitha