Chronologically, cats were the most recently domesticated of creatures. Some love cats to the point of irrationality. Others say "cats are treacherous whereas dogs are loyal." Is it possible that people and cats are still in the "trial" stage of getting used to each other? And what feline phenomena exist in Chinese culture?
After the first ever "Dog Day" on September 9, 1996, this April 4 "Taiwan Cat Day" was initiated in Taipei City. The holiday was conceived by the "Taipei Cat Lovers' Club." After two years of planning and debate, and a vote involving 1208 ballots cast, the holiday was formally declared by club chairman and writer Shin Dai. Shin expressed hope that the day would increase awareness of the beauty of cats, and also help construct a new ethic for human-animal relations. It is estimated that 700 people participated in the opening ceremonies alone.
This event was a startling display of the influence of Taiwan's ailurophiles. According to the club's newsletter, Mao (mao is Chinese for cat), there are about 200,000 people in Taiwan who keep cats as pets. Although this is only one-tenth the number who have dogs, the total cat population is three times that of dogs. At veterinarian Tu Pai's Central Animal Clinic, the ratio of feline to canine patients has gone from 1:10 12 years ago to 1:1 today.
Crazy for cats?
Urban life means less space and more people living alone. This is the main reason why the cat-a largely self-sufficient creature that adapts well to indoor living-is getting to be more popular than the dog.
And with rising wealth, people are treating their cats more and more like humans. Just look at the typical lifestyle of a modern feline. A well-bred cat, fresh from the pet store, besides being of pure breeding and refined appearance, will also come complete with fortune-telling tables, astrological charts, and Yi Jing readings (to forecast the likely relationship between cat and owner); these documents will foretell whether the cat will be happy in its new home. For stray cats picked up off the street, those lucky enough to find a match with a good person can find a life as comfortable as the aristo-cats. They don't have to "go to work" catching mice, yet can still count on three square meals a day of imported canned cat food, not to mention snacks.
Chung Yu-chun, who formerly worked in media-marketing research, has been to many cat-loving countries like the US, England, and France. She has found cat aficionados to be even more devoted and fanatical than dog lovers. She believes this to be true because, thus far, she has run across boutiques devoted exclusively to cats, but none devoted exclusively to dogs. Chung thinks that Taiwan will go the same way as the West, so two years ago she began to systematically import cat handicrafts, turning her hobby into a post-retirement vocation. Her sentiments are shared by the many business people looking for a piece of this market.
Generation gap?
It's interesting that the core of the current group of ailurophiles are young people. Most of the members of the Cat Lovers' Club are in their 20s, with more than 90% having educational levels of high school or above.
Naturally, some people are fond of animals, others are not. But in Taiwan, there is a clear generation gap in cat-titudes, especially with regard to the mixed-blood, short-haired "native cat."
These cats are a unique species that have evolved in Taiwan. But, says Hsia Liang-chou, a professor at the National Pingtung Polytechnic Institute, Taiwan originally had no cats of its own. So where do these so-called native cats come from? The answer lies in the last 400 years of Taiwanese history, during which Taiwan has been ruled by the Spanish, Dutch, the Qing dynasty, and Japan. Tu Pai (who is cooperating with the Cat Lovers' Club in a study of feline blood lines in Taiwan), explains: "Everybody who came brought cats with them."
However, the native cat-which, in the words of Tu, is a "superior breed that, after a long period of survival-of-the-fittest competition, proved most able to adapt to Taiwan's environment"-never won much affection from previous generations.
Tsai Hsiang-lan, who runs "Garden of a Cat Lover" (an animal refuge), has been raising cats for 25 years, and knows this well. For eight years now she has been unconditionally accepting stray cats and finding new owners for them. Though she gives away an average of 100 cats a month, she doesn't just give one to anyone that asks. There is one rather substantial condition: If a person still lives with their parents, they must have signed permission from Mom and Dad. And that's where the generational problems pop up.
The main reason parents oppose their children adopting a cat-besides wondering "what's the use of raising this thing?"-is a concern about health. People from the older generations think of cats in negative terms. They simply cannot understand how younger people can lavish care on cats as if they were their own offspring.
Most of the older generation faced hard times when they were younger. In that era of material shortages, says a fiftyish woman from Hualien, compared to chickens, ducks, or pigs, which could provide food, or dogs, who provided security, the cat was, for most homes, definitely non-essential. The cat's help was only needed when suffering from mice infestation.
Cry in the night
Cats, in every way, seem to make people think of "the dark side." Their movements are sultry and mysterious-how easy it is to imagine a cat creeping stealthily atop a stone wall, cast in silhouette against a full moon. Their almond-shaped pupils, which change shape in shifting light, are eerie enough, without even considering that their eyes may give off a green luminescence (from reflected light). And the screeches they make to attract mates, cutting through the night, are hair-raising. In an age of ignorance, no wonder felines were covered with layers of superstition. Of these, one major label has been that cats "belong to yin [darkness, as opposed to yang, light], and can detect spirits and otherworldly influences."
It is said that, at the Tucheng Detention Center in Taipei County, on the eve of the execution of a death sentence, cats will invariably screech in a chilling and bizarre way.
One university student from Kaohsiung says that one reason elders from around there still insist on "escorting the soul" of the deceased (in part by having someone sit by the coffin) is to prevent a cat from jumping over the coffin, thereby bringing the corpse back to life as a zombie.
Another custom which reflects the bad image cats had in the past is "hanging dead cats from a tree." In some places in the Taiwan countryside, it has been the tradition that cats are not buried after death to rest in peace, but are hung by the neck in the woods. Oddly enough, this is said to be due to the purring sound cats make when they are feeling content. Shin Dai says that people from her small hometown think purring is the sound of troubled breathing, indicating that cats carry illness. Therefore, after a cat dies they insist on tying a rope around its neck to prevent the germs from getting out.
There are still people in rural central and southern Taiwan who hold these beliefs-which arose to try to protect people's health but, ironically, are now seen as unhealthy superstitions of people from the sticks. In March of this year, the China Youth Corps undertook a survey (at the behest of the Environmental Protection Administration) in which they discovered more than 20 instances of "hanging dead cats from a tree and putting dead dogs in the river" in villages within a five-minute bus ride of the city of Changhua. Overall, in two months of field work, they discovered 214 such cases in various towns and villages, most of which were in Changhua, followed by Yunlin and Tainan counties.
Taiwanese slang includes a number of unpleasant expressions regarding what people regard as the "ne'er-do-well" feline philosophy. Folk scholar Chuang Po-ho cited several in an article composed of extracts from his letters. For example, a pock-marked face is called is called a "cat face"; "mountain cats dream of ocean fish" means aspiring to something inappropriate or desiring something unattainable; "a cat that looks after 100 households" refers to a woman who doesn't mind her own business; and "a cat eating noodles" refers to false kindness. When Chuang was small, he was warned not to try to sleep with a cat, for it would urinate all over his bed; Chuang ignored the caution, and found it was all too accurate.
Chinese and cats
In standard Chinese, the character for cat (鱌, pronounced mao) is a combination of the radical for animal (嬪) and the character for a plant seedling (_]). This is because cats could protect rice seedlings from mice. At least, that's the explanation offered by the classic Book of Odes. In the Erya of the Han dynasty, in the ancient year-end worship service to thank the spirits who helped the crops, the cat was one of the eight honored spirits.
Oddly, however, the cat does not have a place in the Chinese zodiac, a belief system which has been a vital part of daily life for Chinese. There are a number of folk tales explaining why the cat has been excluded. One of the most common is that the cat was tricked by a mouse, and didn't make it to the great animal competition on time. Another contends that the cat is supplanted by the tiger, which is, after all, simply a big cat.
One widespread proverb says: Cats bring status, dogs bring wealth. Chuang Po-ho says that it is very possible that this proverb traces back to when the first Tang dynasty feline went to Japan, where it became a symbolic catalyst for wealth, good fortune, and longevity. In any case, bringing a cat into one's home has long been a rather important matter. Lu You, a poet of the Southern Song dynasty, wrote of a ritual in which people gave the then-valuable commodity of salt to the procurer when taking a cat into their homes. Mao magazine carried an article submitted by an association member describing the interesting attitudes of people in the mountain city of Pucheng, in Fujian Province, where he had lived: When they saw a dog or cat go into a new home on its own initiative, they concluded it was "a gift from Heaven," and therefore had to be well-treated. In some wealthy homes, in fact, there was a servant with the special responsibility of looking after the pets.
On the other hand, there is no shortage of studies in "informal histories" about people who raised "cat-demons" to do their bidding (akin to the Taiwanese custom of doing favors for spirits in exchange for services). A history of events in the Sui dynasty records how, in the capital district, owners of cats were suspected of controlling cat demons to drain away wealth and harm people. Thousands of cat-owners were implicated and executed.
In the Middle Ages in Europe, cats were seen as the "familiars" of witches, and suffered for it.
In both East and West, cats have been saddled with the blame for various evils. Is this because of the nature of cats, or the notions of humans?
Cat garden
According to The Encyclopedia Sinica, the Chinese have had a systematic understanding of animals for at least 4700 years; written characters representing insects, fish, birds, and beasts can be found on oracle bones from the Shang dynasty. And the cat is present in the descriptions of the more than 100 animals included in the Book of Odes, written in the Spring and Autumn Period (770-403 BCE).
However, while there are many ancient books devoted to various animals from the tiger to the crab to the cricket, few people have been willing to put in the time to collect the many tales about cats. Certainly the number of writings extant cannot compare to the number about dogs. Known volumes devoted to cats currently available in Taiwan are Mao Sheng (from the Jiaqing reign period of the Qing dynasty, 1796-1821) and Mao Yuan (from the Xianfeng reign of the Qing, 1851-1862).
Fascination with foreign felines
One path by which cats entered China was as gifts to the imperial court from tributary states. Mao Yuan records contributions including "lion cats," "four-eared cats," and "Algerian cats." Based on their physical descriptions and lands of origin, Tu Pai guesses that the "lion cat" is today's Persian cat; that the "four-eared cat" is probably today's Chinchilla, because it "grows hair inside its ears, giving it the appearance of having an ear inside its ear"; and the "Algerian cat," recorded as being trapped by black men, may be another name for the Abyssinian (or Ethiopian) cat from Africa.
If Tu's guesses are not too far off the mark, cats from other lands left their footprints in the inner recesses of the imperial palaces.
The painting of plant and animal life flourished in the Song dynasty, and cats appear in a high percentage of the works of art from that era. Donald Brix, a specialist in Chinese art history at the National Palace Museum, says that all the cats that appear in imperial art in the Song are long-haired (which is to say foreign) cats.
In some cases, cats were valued above humans. The Wanli emperor of the Ming dynasty was famed for his ailurophilia. All the cats raised in his palace had official ranks, from the lowest level servant to the highest official; they were raised with dignity and lived well. Some grew to be bigger than dogs. The treatment they received was in no way inferior to that bestowed on pet cats in today's Taiwan.
Compared to native cats, foreign cats came to Taiwan with the status of pampered pets right from the start.
With rising education and more widespread knowledge about animals, combined with the arrival of Western and Japanese cartoon cats-from Garfield and Felix to Totoro and No No-the image of the cat has steadily improved. Taiwan's people seem particularly fond of Persian cats.
Twenty-five years ago, "cat granny" Tsai Hsiang-lan caught sight of a white-haired Persian cat in a poster. She was captivated by its white fur and innocent expression. She scrounged up NT$200,000 of her own money and got a friend to bring two back from Japan. In those days, that amount of money could have paid for a 2-story house in the Taipei suburb of Yungho.
At present, the ratio of Taipei Cat Lovers' Club members who raise long-haired cats to those who raise short-haired cats is 1.25:1. Li Chih-chiang, general manager of the chain of pet stores called Yu Mao Yuan, which has ten branches throughout Taiwan, says that the most popular cats in Taiwan are mainly long-haired varieties like the white Persian, the Himalaya, and the Chinchilla.
A looming catastrophe
Times have definitely changed. Felines are surrounded by wealth, and are coddled by humans. But does this mean they are happy? Shin Dai responds that "things are possibly worse than before."
In the past, cats could enjoy an unfettered existence befitting their natures, making their way in the natural environment. Today, in exchange for easy meals, they are confined in concrete blocks or-more sadly-steel cages. Worst of all, it doesn't matter what a cat's bloodline might be, "if there is no one to love it, it ends up wandering the streets." Thus does Tsai Hsiang-lan aptly describe the fate of many felines in contemporary Taiwan.
According to a survey conducted last year by the Formosa Foundation, of every 100 dogs or cats no longer in the care of their original owners, 17 become strays (as opposed to being put down or given to new owners).
How does this happen? One way, reveals a veterinarian, is that many people whose pets become seriously ill just abandon them at the animal hospital, never returning to pick them up. There is no system in place in Taiwan to take in stray animals. Given operational constraints on a hospital, the only thing a vet can do is to set these unhealthy animals free in the wild. But this turns the problem from being an implicitly contractual one (between owner and vet), or personal moral one, into one foisted on society. Besides such cases, another major reason there are so many stray cats is that unscrupulous breeders just abandon animals which fail to breed or which have no market value.
In Taiwan, people's understanding of stray animals goes no farther than the roaming dogs that one can see everywhere. On the first Dog Day last September 9, the Life Conservationist Association and the Taipei City Government cooperated to place tracking chips in pets (useful for follow-up research and management). Though the event was said to be "for dogs and cats," all but one of the 200 chips implanted that day were given to dogs-and the one exception was a rabbit.
At present, the dog problem is far more evident and urgent than the cat problem. But Hsia Liang-chou, who has been involved in animal welfare work for many years now, reminds us that, according to his observation of similar situations in the West, "in virtually all cases, after taking care of the stray dog problem, they find themselves with a stray cat problem." He predicts that if the government can successfully implement its current strategy to handle the stray dog problem, the stray cat problem will become obvious in Taiwan within five years.
Hsia says that US animal refuges and halfway houses are already "overflowing with cats." Their numbers surpass those of dogs, and the health threat cats pose to humans has been continually climbing.
In fact, from scattered media reports, from word of mouth passed amongst cat-lovers, and from personal experience, Taiwan's stray cat problem is already coming up on the screen.
Potential health hazard
This slowly awakening volcano will first make itself felt in the area of public health.
Hot on the heels of this year's epidemic of porcine foot-and-mouth disease, the government issued a warning about a possible resurgence of rabies. Tu Pai emphasizes that people shouldn't be fooled into thinking that only dogs are involved; any warm-blooded animal can be a carrier, "and the biggest area of concern is cats." But, admits the Taipei City department in charge of monitoring domestic animals, at present there are no useful statistics at all about the living conditions, numbers, geographic distribution, or behavior of stray cats.
Meanwhile, there is already friction between cats and humans.
Husband-and-wife Donald Brix and Tai Yue, who love their cats like family, recently came across one sad incident. In the neighborhood where they live, there are periodically complaints about cats tearing through the garbage looking for food. One day, residents couldn't capture one particularly nimble adult cat, so they took out their frustration on some new-born kittens, beating them to death and throwing them on the garbage heap.
Brix, who comes from the US, where cats are beloved, simply could not believe that a living thing could be treated in such a way. Frustratingly, Taiwan's society still has considerable prejudice against animals and those who raise them.
For example, as soon as a landlord hears that you have cats, there is virtually no chance of renting an apartment. If you want to take your cat to the vet, even if it is in a portable plastic cage, taxi drivers will often refuse you. And neighbors often give you the evil eye, thinking "why raise a piece-of-trash cat?"
An ethic of mutual benefit
International animal welfare groups have in recent years urged people to respect "animal rights," treating them as one would a disadvantaged group. The groups' premise is that other life forms are not property to be manipulated, but are partners. Domesticated creatures are not "pets," but are "companion animals." In Taiwan, such ideas have resonated with groups like the Cat Lovers' Club and the Life Conservationist Association.
A Swiss animal behavior and animal psychology specialist named Dr. Turner, who visited Taiwan in March, heads an organization which is currently doing scientific studies of human-animal interaction. They hope that, equipped with concrete evidence, they can help build a new ethic for treatment of animals in modern society, by illustrating how people and animals benefit one another.
Gary Jennings, a professor in Australia, in a paper published in 1996, described the advantages of raising animal companions from a utilitarian point of view. Evidence demonstrates that "animal companion raisers" have a lower incidence of seeking medical help for heart problems, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or insomnia, and less frequently require pharmacological treatment for such illnesses even when they do need to seek medical advice. Compared to people without animal companions, those who have dogs see the doctor 8% less often; those with cats, 12% less often.
From mice catcher to beloved pet to animal companion, the cat has always had a mutually beneficial relationship with people. Think about it: Aren't cats rather clever to be able to constantly adapt to the environment that humans change for their own purposes, and satisfy humans' ever-changing demands? So why not treat them a little better?
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Cats usually make people's homes warmer. (drawing by Lin Li-chi)
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In ancient China, cats brightened the days of countless officials, imperial concubines, and nobility. (illustration from "Fox Slave," from the Song dynasty; courtesy of the National Palace Museum)
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People have been domesticating cats for thousands of years, but they have never tamed the cat's hunting instincts, which find a release through games. (photo by Huang Li-feng)
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Cats are naturally adorable and elegant. Cat shops are expert in flaunting cats' selling points.
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(left and right) Cats have always been difficult for humans to understand.
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Cats have gone from being rat catchers to pets to companions. What will be the next step on their journey at man's side? (photo by Huang Li-feng)
Cats have always been difficult for humans to understand.
Cats have always been difficult for humans to understand.
Cats have gone from being rat catchers to pets to companions. What will be the next step on their journey at man's side? （photo by Huang Li-feng）
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