A police traffic officer in Changhua County’s Yuanlin Township (員林), Chu Ya-ching (朱雅琴), said she has begun to subsidize her support of the dozens of stray cats she looks after by selling stickers used on the popular messaging app Line.
Chu said she spends about NT$20,000 per month — half her monthly income — on the cats, most of which goes to neutering, other veterinary fees and food.
She said her involvement with the strays began three years ago, when she found a large colony of strays while on a night patrol in a local park.
Photo: Yen Hung-chun, Taipei Times
Pausing to play with the cats, she said she decided to bring them food before and after work every day, and eventually she became a lifeline for about 30 stray cats living in the area.
She later created a cat lover’s Facebook community named Chu Da-cing’s Mixed Wet (朱大勤混濕團), which now has about 15,000 members, to introduce strays to prospective foster families and share news about the cats.
In addition to helping the cats survive and finding them homes, Chu said that she also uses the group to properly bury dead cats because she cannot bear the thought of their corpses being disposed of like trash.
When cats are killed in traffic accidents, she calls funeral-home workers, especially the cat lovers at Yuanlin’s Dongfeng Mortuary Services, who provide mortician services, cremations and dignified burials for the stray cats, Chu said.
The mounting costs of such activities prompted her to start selling her illustrations on Line to support the cats, she said.
Her doodles, originally created to help her blow off steam due to her stressful job, are visual representations of slang and curses from the police argot, Chu said, adding that the stickers now available in the Line store are an expurgated edition of the originals, after Line Corp deemed them too obscene.
Chu’s stickers — “Chu Da-cing is a One Bar Two,” a nod to her rank-and-file traffic officer’s shoulder epaulette of one bar and two stars — are available to buy for NT$30 per set.
Chu said she receives receives NT$11 for every set sold and all the profits are spent on the stray cats.
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