New Taipei City’s Yi Tian Temple (義天宮), built in 1965 in honor of the sea goddess Matsu, has over the years become not just a place of worship for the residents of Sanchong District (三重), but also a shelter for neighborhood cats.
Unlike most temples, where it is unacceptable for animals to be wandering around, Yi Tian Temple provides a cozy refuge for cats.
“It is not like we are picking up cats around the clock, it is just that it is impossible to sit and watch them die,” said Wang Hsiu-ying (王秀英), leader of the temple’s Buddhist chanting group.
Wang said she first started rescuing stray cats about 10 years ago, when she found a female cat and five newborn kittens near the temple.
Over time, she learned how to take care of cats and began buying large quantities of food for them with her own money, she said.
After a while, volunteers and staff at the temple joined the effort, Wang said.
Now there are usually eight or nine cats at the temple, lying on the altars, curled up inside the statues, or drinking water from the cups offered as tributes to the deities.
“Cats, like humans, are living beings,” Wang said. “The deities won’t be bothered by them.”
The temple’s officer of general affairs, surnamed Tu, said it is interesting that the number of cats at the temple seem to remain about the same.
“As you can see, cats come and go, they die, and it is like their lives are being extended this way,” said Tu, who has taken on the task of dealing with the litter boxes.
Whatever the reason for their constant numbers at the temple, the cats have become an attraction for visitors from home and abroad.
Inside the temple are pictures of “Yuan Yuan” the tabby, “Bao Bao” the tuxedo, “Tai Tai” the gray cat and many others taken by visitors, temple staff and volunteers.
Among them is the famous “New New,” a black-and-white cat that died in 2009 and was renamed “Holy Cat” on a section of the temple’s Web site dedicated to the cats.
No one at the temple can recall what exactly was special about New New, except that she was clever and one of the older strays at the temple.
If worshipers did not put banknotes into the donation boxes properly, New New would push in the money with her paw, former temple management committee chairman Chao Ching-fu (趙慶福) said.
There is also a story on the temple’s Web site about how New New survived a car accident while she was wearing a Matsu amulet.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to