Pipi already dines well. The plump, black-and-white street cat lives near a night market in a Taipei neighborhood where volunteers have fed and taken care of strays for years.
However, Pipi and his fellow street cats have received an upgrade of their dining situation with the “Midnight Cafeteria” project.
Launched in September last year, the “cafeteria” is actually 45 small wooden houses painted by Taiwanese artists and scattered across Taipei. The idea is to give the cats a place to rest while making the process of feeding them less messy.
Photo: Chiang Ying-ying, AP
It began in math teacher Hung Pei-ling’s neighborhood, where about 20 neighbors are helping stray cats in addition to working their full-time jobs.
“We want to push forward this philosophy that you don’t have to be part of a very top-level association or something that takes up all of your time,” she said. “You can just be one person doing something a little bit at a time, a little bit, and taken all together, you can achieve a lot.”
Hung began volunteering after a good friend rescued and raised a stray cat. For five years, she has worked with other cat lovers in the neighborhood who buy the cats food, help clean the houses and coordinate with residents who might have complaints.
Hung also helps capture injured cats and those that need spaying, taking them to receive veterinary attention and returning them to their haunts.
The wooden houses in Hung’s neighborhood were hand-painted by local artist Stefano Misesti and feature smiling felines as well as popular street food such as stinky tofu.
In addition to food bowls, one houses basic medicine for the cats. Neighbors have brought small cushions as well as decorated cardboard boxes to add to the houses.
Started by Chen Chen-yi (陳宸億), a researcher at the Taiwan Animal Equality Association, the cat houses help ensure stray cats are fed well and local residents do not have to deal with a mess. They also raise awareness about the spaying program and the condition of strays.
“In Taiwan, there are a lot of people who feed strays, but often they leave a mess, and then the public becomes annoyed by it and they become annoyed with strays as well,” he said.
The cat houses were a multi-team effort.
Chen applied for a grant from the Taipei City Government to fund the project, and connected with a local ward leader as well as volunteers to carry it out.
On a recent Sunday, Pipi and two of his friends were enjoying attention from Hung and another volunteer who came to feed them. After eating at the cafeteria, they settled in for a lazy morning nap.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
RSS