Cats on the Menu in China, Drawing the Ire of Pet Lovers

An angry group of about 40 cat lovers gathered outside the Guangdong government office in Beijing yesterday, protesting the treatment of cats in their country. Meanwhile, in Guangzhou, China, a butcher going only by the surname "Huang" notes that she can get a feline for your dinner if you like. "Cat’s have a strong flavor," she said. "Dogs taste much better, but if you really want cat meat, I can have it delivered by tomorrow." Such sentiments don’t sit well with a growing group of animal lovers and Wang Hongyao, representing a group protesting the use of cats in restaurant fare, noted, "We must make the correct this uncivilized behavior."

In the past, China was not a country of pet owners, as the Communist party there derided the practice of keeping pets as bourgeois and, due to extreme poverty, it was difficult to afford to care for a cat or dog. In more recent times, however, China’s growing affluence has led to a clash of old traditions and new, softer sentiment.

Apparently, news that over 1,000 cats are taken to Guangdong by train each day has spurred some of the protests. The cats are taken from Nanjing, where apparently people pressed for enough money to live comfortably supplement their meager incomes by "fishing for cats," essentially stealing pets and selling them. A man who would also give on his surname, Lai, told reporters, "It’s never been this bad. Who knows, it might be because of the bad economy. I’ve heard that there are cat-nabbing syndicates from Hunan that are rounding up cats." Never a group to shy away from such issues, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) issued a statement on the matter: "China has no animal protection laws, and throughout the country scores of cats and dogs are bred or rounded up, crammed onto trucks and driven for days under hellish conditions to animal markets, where they are beaten to death, strangled or boiled alive." There is no word on whether the Chinese government is sympathetic to the protestors' pleas.