Animal lovers in Singapore will soon be able to publish tributes to their dead pets when the city-state's leading daily launches a special obituary section.
From December 16, the classified ads section in the Sunday edition of the English-language Straits Times will have a segment devoted to pet obituaries, publisher Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) said.
The Pets Corner is a section of the classified ads that already contains a pet adoption column and a lost and found segment.
For pet obituaries, tributes of no more than 30 words will be published for free, subject to space availability.
However, a grieving owner may choose to enhance the message by having it published with a photograph of the pet at a "special discounted price" of Sg$50 ($41).
"More and more, we are getting requests from pet owners who want to remember their pets which have passed away, and want to tell the stories of their pets," said Tan Su-Lin, vice president for CATS Classified, which handles advertisements for the SPH stable of newspapers.
"Pet lovers have the kind of deep, emotional bonds they have forged with their pets and we want to give them a platform to express this in print," Tan told AFP.