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*Animals' best friend*

*By John Lui*

Ms Deirdre Moss does not have any pets at home. As executive officer of the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), she walks the talk.

She lives alone in a Bukit Timah condominium and, keeping true to one of the
organisation's tenets, does not think it would be fair to have a pet when
she is hardly at home.

'It's a huge responsibility and you have to be there for them a certain
amount of time,' she says.

As the operational head of Singapore's largest and oldest animal charity for
a quarter of a century, her name has become synonymous with all things
fourfooted, feathered and furry, especially when they become public issues.

That is when her letters, with their characteristically cool, dispassionate
tone, appear in The Straits Times Forum pages. Over the years, she has
written dozens of missives. She has spoken out against the killing of a
mouse to advertise the dangers of nicotine, the abuse of dogs slaughtered
for meat and a restaurant's use of a lobster-grabbing machine for sport,
among other topics.

And the Australian-born Singapore permanent resident has given her views in
dozens of interviews. Recently, she has welcomed the scrapping of plans for
a whale shark exhibit at Resorts World at Sentosa and spoken out on the cat
poisonings in Bayshore Park.

The tone of her letters is deliberate, she says. 'How are you going to sway
people if you sound extreme to them?' she asks.

The interview takes place at her office in a building in Mount Vernon Road
that has seen better days. Though clean and well-maintained, the furniture
in the lobby and her office look to be of 1980s vintage.

Various SPCA posters are tacked on the walls of her small, neat office on
the ground floor of the two-storey administration building. She has large,
expressive eyes and some grey in her honey-streaked hair.

In contrast to the official tone she adopts in print, an edge creeps into
her Australian-accented voice when she talks about the callousness of animal
abusers or about the cavalier attitude of those in the pet trade.

And when the questions stray to her personal life, she is visibly and
audibly uncomfortable, but in an instant, she turns charmingly and
effusively apologetic. She would rather talk about the work in the
organisation, she says.

Large swathes of her life are off-limits: Much of her childhood in
Australia, her marriage in Singapore and subsequent divorce and whether she
is seeing someone.

Those who know her speak of her as a private person who can appear reserved
until she feels they have earned her trust.

The field of animal activism has changed in the last decade. Partly in
reaction to the SPCA and Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore's
(AVA) policy of putting down their unwanted charges, small non-profit groups
have formed to find other solutions to the problem of strays and unwanted
pets. Advocacy, sterilisation and permanent rehousing are their preferred
methods.

On the Internet, the SPCA and AVA in general, and sometimes Ms Moss in
particular, have come under fire for using euthanasia. A former SPCA
volunteer, who declined to be named, joined a 'no-kill' group, saying she
left the SPCA because she felt the organisation was not doing enough to
house and feed animals during their natural lifespan.

She has in the past welcomed the rise of these welfare groups, but she
sounds upset and also weary when the accusations are put to her, such as the
one that the SPCA conducts a stray animal elimination service.

'I want to make it clear that it is not the SPCA's job to round up strays,'
she says. It will go out to rescue animals in distress, but not hunt down
healthy strays, she adds. The group also counsels those surrendering animals
to make sure they know the consequences of turning them in and asks if they
have exhausted all alternatives.

She also points out that the shelter takes in between 600 and 1,000 animals
a month, with only between 10 and 20 per cent being adopted by new owners.

If it were to permanently house the rest of the animals, it would have to
start turning others away.

'If we were to say, 'We're full up, we don't have space', a lot of animals
will probably get dumped in the streets,' she says.

Today, the SPCA's shelter houses up to 170 animals at a time, comprising
mainly dogs, cats and small animals such as guinea pigs, hamsters and
rabbits.

She adds that putting resources into life-time animal housing sends the
wrong message that the SPCA is the first resort for those who want to be rid
of their pets, rather than the last.

But the issue which draws much of her ire is that of Singaporeans who buy,
then dump pets. There is a clear exasperation in her voice when she talks
about those who breed and sell pets indiscriminately, and those who buy
them, only to give them up afterwards.

'More pet shops have sprouted up and there is more commercial breeding. For
a small island, we have tons of pet shops and breeders. Pets are too easy to
buy. That's why they are consumer items, like furniture.'

Out of over 100 dogs surrendered or taken in by SPCA last month, only 31
were adopted. Those not adopted had to be put down to make way for fresh
intake.

It is a dispiriting task - taking in unwanted animals and putting them down.
It would be easy for Ms Moss to feel sorry for herself. 'But I have to cope
because if I don't do it, who else will?'

A friend, Ms Deborah Barker, a lawyer in her 50s, says that her job is
'stressful'.

'The SPCA makes the practical decision to put down some animals. Then they
are exposed to extreme animal rights groups who condemn them on the
Internet,' she says.

Ms Barker's sister, Carla, is vice-chairman of the SPCA's management
committee.

As the public face of the organisation in Singapore, Ms Moss is easily the
target of criticism, but she rolls with the punches, adds Ms Barker.

'She has strong feeling about it, but I don't think she lets it overwhelm
her. She could not carry on if she did.'

Ms Mary Soo, 62, chairman of the SPCA, has known Ms Moss for 25 years and is
aware of how resourceful she can be when championing the cause of animals.
Recently, Ms Soo was told that a small cat was trapped in a locked,
abandoned house in a zone slated for redevelopment. The cat lovers who found
it had turned to the authorities, but nothing could be done as the home was
private property and no one knew who the owners were.

When Ms Moss was told of the situation, she tracked down the contractor even
though it was a weekend and got him to free the cat.

'The cat's feeders were so happy that it was freed,' says Ms Soo.

There are now 14 members of staff at the shelter arm. Ms Moss imagines that
if government policy and responsible pet owning behaviour were to suddenly
be in place to reduce the burden on the shelter, the SPCA could re-allocate
staff and resources to its core mission of promoting kindness through
education and reducing suffering through sterilisation, investigation and
rescues.

'What a dream that would be,' she says, smiling.

When she is not working, she unwinds with friends over dinner and also swims
and watches videos. The Catholic goes to mass on Sundays and sometimes on
weekdays.

There was little in her early life to indicate that she would turn out to be
an articulate defender of animals and an organisation's leader.

She was born to Johannah O'Neill, who had migrated to Australia from
Ireland, and Eurasian-Singaporean Denis D'Cotta. Mr Justice D'Cotta, one of
the more prominent members of Singapore's Eurasian community, rose to the
post of High Court judge in 1970 and retired in 1981. He died in 1983 in
Melbourne, where he had been living since retirement. Her mother, a
psychiatric nurse, died in 1999.

Ms Moss has one brother, Denis Jr, who is a year older, living in Brisbane
where he is a ship chartering manager for a major grain trading house in
Australia.

She attended several schools around Australia before doing her A levels in
English, French, music and Bible studies at a boarding school for girls,
Presentation Convent, in Melbourne. She got married, came to Singapore and
worked at various jobs before volunteering at the SPCA in 1983, driven by
her love of animals.

'I liked it. I had a real purpose in life,' she says.

She found her niche and was soon volunteering almost every day as a
receptionist at the veterinary clinic.

Her dedication was noticed and she was offered a spot on the management
committee. After the former head left for England, she was offered the top
job in 1984.

In her first year, there were 10 full-time employees. Today there are 34.
Its 11-person management committee used to be dominated by expatriates but
now the team is overwhelmingly Singaporean. The society is a registered
charity and raised $2.36 million last year, mainly from public donations.

The lease on its roughly 0.37ha plot in Mount Vernon Road, allocated by the
government at a nominal rent when the organisation moved out of its Orchard
Road premises in 1984, will expire in 2012. The group is looking for a new
site and would have to pay for the construction cost and lease.

The costs, which will run into the millions, will use up much of the
reserves which the group has been setting aside for the purpose.

After being with the SPCA for more than 20 years, Ms Moss admits she has not
given much thought to what she will do after retirement. She still holds
Australian citizenship. She may move back to Australia or remain here if she
finds a new job.

'I love Asia. I think my heart is more here than anywhere else.'

The time is drawing near for a new executive officer, she acknowledges.
While she is happy that the organisation is satisfied enough with her
performance to have kept her on as an employee for such a long period, she
would be pleased if her successor was found before the move to the new
building.

'The days are flying by,' she says. No successor has yet been named, but the
group is actively looking.

'It would be time, it would definitely be time,' she says of the leadership
change.

'Some might say 25 years is too long already and she should be out of there.
And I would not argue with that. I would not argue with that at all,' she
says with a laugh.



*This article was first published in The Straits
Times<http://www.straitstimes.com/>
.*

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