I would like to recognise the cat lovers of China who do great work under trying or almost impossible circumstances to improve the lives of cats.
There are cat lovers and carers in China. They are like salmon swimming upstream. They are working against the general culture and officials, I firmly sense.
The first example is a story about a lady who rescues cats in Shaghai. She has about 1,000 cats in her care. Yes, that is an impossible number and she knows it. The high number came about because she rescued an entire lorry load of about 860 cats destined to be cat meat on the menu of restaurants. Those were added to the existing high number.
This lady is not a cat hoarder. Definitely not. She is aware of the problems and the unsatisfactory nature of her situation but has to help.
Her husband fiances things. She sold their home worth 2 million yuan (about $300, 000) to continue to fund the cat rescue operation.
It isn’t just the extreme difficulty of caring for way too many cats. She has to contend with neighbours who quite frankly hate her. She has to run a tightrope to keep in with the local police; to get them to accept what she is doing.
Her name is Duo Zirong. The cats rescued from the lorry were in fact bought by another lady for 5,000 yuan which is about $660. The cats were worth less than a dollar a piece in China. Some had collars so were domestic cats belonging to someone.
The whole Duo cat rescue operation seems to be totally desperate 24/7 and I feel for this lady very much. I admire her greatly. She wants people to adopt her cats urgently but is struggling to find candidates.
The following link (opening in a new window) is a scanned page from the Shanghai Times: Cat rescue in China by Duo Zirong
If anyone can help: Contact Duo Zirong at 138-1663-4670, Rooms 108 and 110, No. 2, Lane 3825, Dushi Road. Shanghai, China. This is where she and her cats and husband live:
The next story concerns the cats of Beijing Park, Beijing, China and a cat lover, Wang Lirong, who fed some of them. I believe others did too.
When it was discovered that a mass slaughter of the park feral/stray cats had occurred there was a spontaneous protest by concerned people. It is pleasing to note that there were people who care about cats in Beijing, China wiling to protest. This is a good sign.
Wang had been feeding the cats for four years. She was told that park officials had arranged for the cats to be killed. Dead cats were also found around the park which is famous and a UNESCO world heritage site. The park officials deny wrong doing. Is it wrong? It is not illegal to kill cats in China because there are no animal welfare laws.
There are some great cat lovers – ailurophiles – in China. Essentially they battle against officials and citizens who don’t care about cats and some who actively want to see them eradicated. That is my distinct impression having for years read about the cats of China.
Michael I googled the first lady – Duo Zirong and the first result was one about hoarding.
Basically there are people in power in the world of animal rescue who will call a person with over a handful of cats a hoarder with a mental illness.
You can’t do anything right with these people. These people would just kill every last animal. I hate them. PETA et al. They don’t solve the problem or even try to.
It’s awful. I have experience with such air. I was in Mexico city in the early ’90s and the air was so bad your eyes were stinging and watering to the point that you couldn’t see properly. I honestly couldn’t see from having to close my eyes from the stinging and I remember wondering how others coped with it. I guess they just get used to it. The sunsets there were always amazing because of the huge smog cloud over the city diffracting the light and adding redish brown colours to it. I believe it had to have been one of the worst polluted sities in the world at the time. People were/are only allowed to drive their cars on 2 days of the week. Your licence plate designates which days you can drive. Too many cars and pollution basically.
I also remember the pollution in Delhi being fairly bad, Madras and Hyderabad too. That kind of pollution is worse than a heavy smoking habit. My doctor told me just living in London is like smoking a pack a day. So if you smoke a pack a day in London it’s like smoking 40 a day for your lungs.
The thing is now pollution from cars etc is invisible – it’s more gas than smog. Its worse in the cold because it stays low down yet in the cold you don’t sense it at all. People think if you can’t see or smeel it then its not there but it is and in full force too.
What is it with China – they seem to have very little connection to the planet. They just don’t care about the most important things. Wierd.
This is dreadful it must be horrendous for the people living there who care about cats.
If you love cats or animals you can’t walk by when you see an animal in need. That is the problem for this woman. She is in the wrong place. It seems that a lot of Chinese citizens don’t care about animals that much. If they did there’d be some bloody legislation protecting animals.
A child of 8 died on lung cancer because she lived near a road and inhaled all the smog. When I visited China in the 1971 you could almost chew the air it was that filthy – full of gritty particles. That was Beijing. They have no legislation on air pollution or it is not enforced. A lot of people are poisoned to death by unregulated industrialisation in China all to feed Western consumer appetites.
Think of the street cats breathing in that crappy air.
I’d be in complete despair over there. It would change my whole life I guess. Where I am now I have the luxury of being able to care for my 3 and go to work and make money for my cats and me. But if the situation were like China or America my whole life would have to change. I’d be up in the night feeding cats and creeping around trying to help them without getting in trouble. IT would be a very hard and stressful life and I feel for people in such circumstances. If you love cats there is nothing you can do about it – you have to help them whenever you can and in places like the US and China you are confronted with awful cat situations and it is impossible not to react and drop everything and try and help them and keep them alive and safe.
Very hard indeed. Very sad. These people need help and support from wherever they can get it.