Four-legged Floor

There is an annual Pet Expo here in Singapore that has been going on since 2014. I heard about it over an event-site and thought it would be a small adventure to do. Either way, none of us had been to the expo before. It had its own subway station and is located close to the airport.

Pet Expo was held over the course of three days and, after looking at the programme, we decided to attend on Saturday. It was open between eleven and eight, but we knew we would only stay for a couple of hours. We arrived at the Expo-station around two o'clock after over an hour on the MRT. Before going to the animals we went to the nearby mall to have lunch. I am still on my diet so we definitely tried to find something I could eat. This is very difficult, Singapore does not make it easy to be restricted with your food. Vegans would not survive here. I ended up cheating just a little bit. We had Texas fried chicken. Fries are okay, that is just potatoes and salt, but fried chicken has gluten in the batter. A very small cheat. At least I drank mangojuice and not soda. We generally recommend eating at Texas, they have very tender chicken and delicious honey-coated biscuits.

We then walked over to the expo halls. There were several. I went online to find out which one we were supposed to go to and then headed to Hall Seven. There was a surprisingly long queue outside, luckily we already had tickets. We went to the online-purchase and got a yellow band around our wrists. A dog in an ugly dress stood in our way. We rounded it, commenting on the terrible outfit, and entered Hall Seven. It was less overwhelming than I had expected, but there were a lot of people there. Dogs barked and even though cats were everywhere, they made very little sounds. There was a "speed-dating" adoption area, called Pawfect Match, where you could enter a small enclosed area with a dog (possibly cats too, but I did not see any) and decide on the spot if you wanted to adopt it. I wanted to go in but John would not let me since he knew I would never come out alone.

In the other end of the hall we found an exhibition of fish - more specifically Flowerhorns. I had never seen this type of fish before but found it absolutely fascinating. The one in the photo won first place for its headbulb. Other qualifications, won by others, was the pattern and it was beautiful. All of them seemed very intelligent, they followed the humans with an interest and not just blind obidience. I thought at one point that I had eye contact with one, but that could not be true, right?

There was a main stage in a corner of the big hall (which by the way was not completely filled with booths) where, when we entered, they had a Meet & Greet with Instagrammers. It was as cringe as it sounds. People seemed to have signed up before the show because there was a big screen where they showed one of their photos. Then the Instagrammer would go up on stage with its pet and talk about it. Afterwards the six "famous Singaporean Instagrammers" would sit on the stage, with the pets in their laps, and people could stand in line to talk to them, take a photo and pet the animals. We hurried away from the stage.

We sat down oddly close to a judging table for a Cat Show. The judge had an impressive routine of cleaning the table, dragging his hands in the solution before drying it with wipes, taking a cat from one of the cages behind him, putting it on the table, using a feather in the cats face for half a second and then touching the face in various parts. We understood nothing, but rewards were handed out in a steady pace so... we understood very little. Some of the cats did not want to leave their cages and meowed a lot to show their displeasure. Others looked like they had accepted their fate, but did not seem to enjoy themselves. We would never put Ymir through something like that. We did not even bring him to this event.

Without our pet, there was not a lot to do there. Figures, right? There were a lot of booths with free health checking, cleaning, brushing, and other examinations, but we could not make use of them. After the first round we started looking for the free stuff. There are always free samples to get somewhere. We found a stall that had a catchy song. I started to sing along and John received a paper with questions. It was simple - answer the question and get a free sample of cat food. By the time he had finished we had been sold of the catchy song and bought the candy it was singing about.

Apart from two of the three red and blue candy, all in the photo below was given to us free of charge. Buying the ticket to enter the event online costed SGD 4$. All in all it was worth it, cute animals and free stuff for our cat at home. Not an event we will be attending again.