Shao Ling (
She has turned the basement and ground floor of her home into a shelter for scores of kittens picked up off the streets in Kaohsiung. In addition, she rents a dwelling near a traditional food marketplace in the city's Sanmin district to house 80 other stray cats.
For the past six years, Shao has spent nearly all of her leisure time looking after stray cats. She brings home stray cats and sends sick ones to veterinary hospitals for treat-ment. Every morning, she visits food markets to fetch ingredients to prepare food for the cats.
Besides feeding the 100-plus cats kept in her home and the rented house, she also cycles to more than 30 different locations every night, mostly in parks and temple courtyards, with over 300 rations of home-made pet food to feed wandering cats.
Shao's love affair with cats dates back to a brief encounter with a feeble kitten in front of the Kaohsiung Railway Station on a winter night in late 1997.
"The small animal was licking spittle which a homeless man had spat. I thought the stray kitten was hungry, so after finishing off some errands, I bought canned pet food and returned to the site," she said.
"However, the kitten was no longer there. I visited the place the next two days, but the animal was nowhere to be found. I felt regret for my failure to take care of the cat right away, " Shao said, adding that she thinks the kitten may have died because of her negligence.
"Since that time, I have made up my mind to look after every stray cat I happen across," she said.
Shao used to be a top teacher at a high school in Kaohsiung and she has continued to teach at cram schools since her retirement. Her monthly income often exceeds NT$300,000, but she leads a humble life, wearing old clothes and eating simple food.
Her former students said their teacher was stylish and fashion-conscious in the past.
"But she has changed her lifestyle since she fell in love with stray cats, " one of her students said.
"She now pays little attention to her attire and has even quit her hobby of taking overseas trips as she is worried that nobody can look after her pets during her absence," the student said.
Shao's neighbors have often complained about the foul smell and incessant noise from the large concentration of stray cats that live with her.
Some of them refer to her as a "mad woman" and even her family questioned her sanity once.
Shao said she doesn't care about the unkind words directed at her by other people.
At the age of 60, she said she has begun drawing up a plan for the future of her pets.
"I want to leave a sum of money to finance the living expenses of my 100-plus pet cats after my death," she said. "I'll commission animal caregivers to look after them."
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