Inside celebrity couple Hong Ling and Nick Teo’s fur family: Cat trio got them through grief

SINGAPORE – The first sign that something was wrong was the colour of his face.

Their white cat, Zhaocai, padded into the room one day with his face stained a strange orange hue. It took a second for it to click: he had brushed against the pollen of a bouquet of lilies sitting at home.

“Because he is white, his whole face suddenly looked orangey,” recalls local actor Nick Teo, 36. “We were like, what happened?” When they learned that lily pollen is deadly to cats, Teo and his actress wife Hong Ling, 31, immediately rushed to the vet to have Zhaocai checked out.

It was a close call, and their “firstborn” pulled through.

But the scare crystallised a thought that had been building slowly between work, family and home: their three cats are not just pets. They are, in many ways, emotional companions and an anchor, especially in a turbulent 2025.

That year, the home-grown actress lost her mother to cancer in February. She shared about her miscarriage on Mother’s Day in May. Her grandmother died in September.

What should have been a second year of newlywed bliss for the couple, who married in 2023, instead became a relentless cycle of grief.

All this played out while they were also working together on the upcoming Channel 8 series No Other Way, which started production in October 2025.

The celebrity couple headlines the 20-episode crime drama, which premieres June 29 in two versions, PG and M18, the latter exclusive to mewatch. The gritty series follows an emotionally detached detective (Teo) and a prosecutor (Hong) who is haunted by her past. As they investigate a string of brutal crimes, long-buried truths from their own lives gradually come to light.

No Other Way demanded heavy emotional scenes from the couple, and, for Teo, physical ones too: he did his own stunts, including a sequence where he was literally set on fire – under strict safety supervision.

The three-month shoot was draining, the couple admitted. But to be able to go home together and be greeted by their three fur kids was what they needed to decompress.

Their cats are intuitive to their moods, especially Zhaocai.

“When we are sad, he will just come over and sit beside us,” says Teo, who recently starred in Highway To Somewhere (2026). “After a long day at work, if we come home feeling very emo, he somehow knows. He will just be there with us. He can really sense it.”

Three cats, three very different personalities

The fur family started with Zhaocai, which they adopted in January 2021. The long-haired white male, likely a ragdoll-Maine Coon mix, is about four to five years old.

When they realised Zhaocai seemed lonely because of their busy schedules, the couple looked for a companion for him. That led them to Jinbao, a chubby orange tom they spotted a few months later on the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) website.

“He’s very fat and very smart,” says The Spirit Hunter (2025) actress, half exasperated, half proud of Jinbao, who is around three to four years old.

Teo adds: “He knows how to open doors – even the heavy bomb shelter door where we keep their food. He will jump up, use his body weight to push the handle down and help himself.”

The third to join the clan in 2023 was Eve, a British shorthair thought to be about four years old. The couple rescued her from animal shelter Voices For Animals, where they would volunteer when time permitted.

“When she first came to our house, she would eat nonstop. I think she was scared there would be no food,” says Hong. “Every time we put food, she would finish everything – even the leftovers from the boys.” Over time, Eve realised food would always be there, and her frantic eating eased.

Ask if they have favourites, and the couple squirm, like parents caught out.

He jokes that eldest Zhaocai is his soft spot. She admits Jinbao tugs at her heart, perhaps because of his goofiness and eternally hungry eyes. Eve, they both concede with a laugh, is “the youngest and the most overlooked”.

“She’s the third cat, so sometimes we really do not pay her as much attention,” Teo says.

Jinbao is food-driven and shameless, the first to ask for treats and the last to leave the bowl. Eve is wary but loyal; she will come when called, but on her own terms. Together, the trio cover the emotional spectrum: comfort, comic relief, and low-key devotion.

A quirk of Zhaocai is that he knows when his pawrents will be away from home – when the luggage appears.

“He recognises our luggage,” says Hong Ling. “Every time the luggage comes out, he knows we are leaving. He will become super clingy and keep meowing.”

On trips, she is the one glued to the CCTV feed, checking in on them from hotel rooms. “For me, they are totally off my mind,” Teo admits. “She is always the one scrolling on the phone, watching the feed.”

The irony is that both actors grew up with dogs. But long days on set and irregular call times convinced them they could not commit to dog ownership.

“I chose cats because of my work schedule,” says Hong. “Now I’m totally a cat person. I think cats are like women – we need our personal space.”

The cats are mostly indoors. Attempts to bring them out have ended with panting, wet noses and stressed-out felines.

And plants are now heavily policed. The lily incident rewired their habits. “Now, every time we have flowers at home, we will check if they are poisonous to cats,” says Teo, who won his first Top 10 Most Popular Male Artiste award at the Star Awards 2026 in April.

The couple, who are open about wanting children, joke that having pets is a training of sorts for real parenthood.

“Babies and toddlers, they can talk back. That’s very different,” Hong Ling says with a laugh.