When a boy began coming home later from school, his dad set about tracking him down.
Barry Amante, from Davao City, the Philippines, knew something as up when his boy Ken went missing after school a few years ago.
As the days went by, the eight-year-old got back later and later, with no explanation as to where he'd been.
Barry was a mechanic, and even though he struggled at times, he would always give Ken some pocket money to teach him the value of things.
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However, alarm bells began to ring when the worried dad noticed that his boy suddenly had no money.
What was going on? Where was the young lad going?
After a couple of weeks of his son's behaving quite strangely, Barry decided to take matters into his own hands and find out once and for all what was going on.
To keep tabs on the comings and goings at their home, he decided one day to leave the door open to his workshop.
As luck would have it, though, on that particular day, Ken came home right on time.
Just a few minutes later, however, his lad reappeared with his backpack on, and headed out once again.
Curious, Barry followed him down the road to see where he was going.
Ken walked into a grocery store and came out with his bag seemingly filled with items.
The dad then watched as his son went down the road and turned into a bad part of the neighbourhood.
As he turned a corner, he saw Ken crouched down in the middle of an empty road, pulling stuff out of his backpack.
Seconds later, a bunch of stray animals jumped out and began hovering around the young boy.
Worried, Barry raced over to his son and scared the animals away.
And that's when he realised what Ken had been doing these past few weeks and where his money was going.
Surrounded by plates and tins of dog food, Ken had been using his pocket money to feed these poor animals.
"I’m embarrassed to say I was pretty disgusted,” Barry admitted. “My son changed my perspective entirely."
Ken later told his dad that it was his dream to open up an animal shelter, but sadly the family didn't have the money to help him make it a reality.
But after Barry shared a photo of Ken feeding some animals to Reddit, he received a huge amount of support and decided to set up a website, called Happy Animals Club.
Soon, donations began to pour in and they were running a small animal shelter from their garage.
Writing on his website, Ken said: "I love animals. I have one rescue dog and two rescue cats. Ever since I can remember I wanted to open an animal shelter to help the stray dogs and cats on the streets.
"Happy Animals Club’s main goal will be to rescue dogs from the city pound. the official at the pound said most dogs are put down because only 20-30 percent of owners claim their dogs, and no animal welfare organization is doing something about it."
Years later, he has now expanded to a proper facility, with two large pens, two apartments and an annex, where they now also care for cats.
Topics: World News, Animals, Dogs, Cats
Dominic Smithers