The sun is setting into a hazy, purplish hue as I stand outside an old residential building near Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall which sells musty second-hand pianos on the ground floor. I check the address for the third time, wondering if I had incorrectly written the Chinese characters.
Suddenly, I hear a buzzing sound from the intercom. The gate pops open. As I ride the elevator up to the seventh floor, I’m not sure what to expect.
But there’s barely time to react. The door swings open and out jumps four or five perfectly groomed, flat-face white Himalayan kittens, their big blue eyes stare at me inquisitively. There are many more inside. A harried but smiling woman in shorts and a tank top welcomes me and asks if I want a glass of water. Yes, please, I tell her, trying to hold back an imminent sneeze attack.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
As soon as she puts down the glasses, her kittens — who are climbing up and down the sofa and dashing across the living room floor — knock them over. She throws her arms up in exasperation and motions for her maid to help wipe down the marble floor. I notice then that the apartment is spotless and odor-free. Nothing is out of the ordinary except for the two dozen cats roaming about — even her three young daughters are doing their homework quietly in the dining room as cats snuggle by their feet.
CATTERY WITH A CONSCIENCE
Fifth Love Cattery, which is run by Chang Ching-yi (張靜宜), is one of the many home catteries in Taipei — a trend that’s on the rise. Generally speaking, such catteries cater to well-to-do women in their 40s whose Facebook feed is filled with pictures of their purebred Himalayans in Hermes handbags or decked with ribbons at a cat show.
For Chang, who is also president of the Taiwan branch of the Cat Fanciers Association (a worldwide non-profit devoted to pedigree recording and promoting the interests of breeders of pedigreed cats), running her cattery is not just a hobby — it’s her life. When she’s not meticulously removing cat hair from pillows, Chang is chasing down her 25 cats (15 adults and 10 kittens) to make sure that they’re taking their vitamins and supplements.
“See how red her tongue is?” Chang asks, grabbing one of her squirming kittens. “It means that she’s really healthy.”
She says that other catteries may not be as homely as hers. They may keep their cats in cages and only bring them out when potential owners visit. Despite being registered to an association, they might not abide by the rules, and overbreed their cats to earn more profit.
“Good catteries have a conscience,” Chang says. “I prefer everything to be transparent, where you can see the environment that the cats grow up in.”
Chang makes sure that the mother cats — most of whom are imported from the US — only give birth three times in their life. She bathes her cats every other day, grooms them daily and feeds them gourmet-quality kibbles. She interviews interested buyers to ensure that they’ll be good owners, and spays and neuters the cats once someone has claimed them. It’s also spelled out in her contract that new owners must microchip their cat.
She says that seeing potential owners interact with the kittens is important since “they are live animals, not products.”
APPLES AND ORANGES?
While Fifth Love Cattery has been in operation for only a year, it took Chang three years to organize. When the Himalayans arrived in Taiwan from the US, they were quarantined for eight to 10 months. The rest of Chang’s time was spent researching and registering the cattery — a seemingly huge amount of time and effort (and probably why she has to charge at least NT$50,000 for a “show-quality” cat). But Chang says it’s worth it.
She shows me her Facebook feed, which — no surprise — is cats, cats, cats. She’s also Facebook friends with her customers, and it warms her heart to see that her cats are growing up in good homes and faring well in competitions.
“It’s rewarding, this kind of personal, ongoing interaction,” Chang says.
In another Facebook post, she writes about rushing a mother cat who was having a difficult birth to the emergency room. The vet told her that one of the kittens was in the womb for too long and barely had a chance of survival. But Chang wouldn’t consider euthanasia as an option. She says that as long as the kitten had a pulse, he had a chance to live. Today, the kitten is doing well.
Chang calls herself an ethical breeder — a label she wears with pride.
As another fluffy white Himalayan leaps onto my lap, I notice that it has teardrops forming in its eyes. But I didn’t think much of it at the time.
Instead, remembering the two or three stray cats I saw on my way to Chang’s cattery, I ask her about what she thinks of Taiwan’s stray problem — how shelters are filled to the brink, and how many strays still roam the streets.
“Some people want to adopt a pet from a shelter and that’s fine,” she says. “Others have a specific pedigree in mind, or they wish to purchase a show-quality cat — it doesn’t make you a bad person.”
To her, it’s like “apples and oranges.” But without catteries, she believes that bloodlines can’t be recorded and the types of pedigrees can’t be preserved. Chang says that without knowing who the cat’s parents are, it makes it more difficult to predict the types of diseases your cat might be prone to.
“It’s about quality over quantity,” Chang says.
STRAY SITUATION
Others disagree. One of them is Liza Milne, a 20-year Taipei resident originally from the UK. As the events coordinator and chairperson for Animals Taiwan, a non-profit devoted to the rescue, rehabilitation and adoption of stray dogs and cats, she says that Taiwan is overloaded with stray animals in private and government shelters, not to mention on the streets. Milne says that if breeders love animals, they wouldn’t breed until the stray problem has been solved, or that they would at least donate to help strays in some way.
“They can do more to help the stray situation and take on more responsibility,” Milne says.
Sean McCormack, the co-founder and executive director of The Sanctuary, a non-profit similar to Animals Taiwan, agrees. To McCormack, another long-time expat from the UK, the problem of breeding while there are so many strays out there is not about apples and oranges, it’s about genetic modification.
“Different people love animals differently,” McCormack says. “Some love having them in a cage to look at whenever they want. Some love to dress animals up in clothes. Some love to force unhealthy animals to be bred because they like their ‘funny’ faces.”
The best way to love a cat, McCormack says, is to accept the cat for what it is, rather than expecting him or her to conform to a certain look. He says a “show-quality” cat is an unnatural breed — in fact, breeds were invented by people. The more dire issue for animal rights activists though, is that breeding for shows is about producing a look that the breeder has designed.
Recording a bloodline, McCormack says, is a marketing ploy that has zero benefit to the animal or owner. The reality is that many of these inbred cats — especially Himalayans — suffer from lifelong stress and are more prone to sicknesses. Because of their flat faces, Himalayans are constantly struggling to get enough air into their compressed passageways and their unusually large eyes make them prone to excessive tearing, which may lead to skin infections and cleft palates, along with other health problems (this probably explains the teardrops in some of the cats’ eyes at Chang’s cattery).
Milne also raises the issue of Himalayans being extremely sensitive to heat — “why would you introduce it to Taiwan which is extremely hot and humid?” she asks.
McCormack is equally stunned.
“Breeding for such suffering is akin to forcing a person with Down syndrome to mate with someone born with a severe cleft palate just because you think the resulting offspring would be fun to look at,” he says.
Both Milne and McCormack find it hard to believe that cattery owners are running their business simply as a hobby.
“Their bottom line is money and if they tell you anything else, they are lying,” Milne says.
However, McCormack believes that for some, it’s a hobby that they hope will become profitable. Although he adds that NT$50,000 is “a stupid amount of money” for an animal that’s prone to ill health. Both Animals Taiwan and The Sanctuary ask for a NT$2,000 to NT$2,500 adoption fee, which covers spaying/neutering, vaccinations and microchipping. McCormack says it’s “a real bargain.”
TOO MUCH FLUFFY
I have to interrupt Chang who’s giving one of her cats a shower to say goodbye. By now, my nose has swelled up to three times its size. Smiling, but looking stressed with bubbles dripping down her arms, Chang reminds me that the next show is in December.
“Come see my cats!” she says.
Perhaps some breeders just haven’t given much thought to the bigger picture and are unaware that they are contributing to the over-population problem. Others might choose to turn a blind eye.
The reality is that while catteries are producing boutique felines, other cats are suffering on the streets. This is something that I can’t shake off, no matter how cute the Himalayans are.
Not all breeders, however, are evil and profit-driven. What needs to happen is greater awareness of the stray situation in Taiwan and how breeding exacerbates the problem. Still, Chang is responding to the market for pedigree pets in a manner that she sees as responsible. Not only is she making sure that her cats are well taken care of and not overbred, but that the people buying them from her understand their responsibilities and will raise the cats in a loving environment.
But as McCormack says, “You will fall in love with whatever creature stumbles into your life journey, so you may as well go save one from euthanasia or lifelong sheltering.”
Maybe if I wasn’t so allergic, I would adopt. But I also really want to attend the cat show in December. Does that make me a bad person?
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