Editorial note: This story contains descriptions of animal abuse.
Growing up in Shanghai, I was always surrounded by an abundance of stray cats. They appeared out of alleyways in bustling downtown streets, huddled on rocks and nestled in bushes. My apartment complex located on the outskirts of town, filled with lush greenery, was an ecosystem for strays.
Our apartment is home to three cats. The oldest, Dottie, was rescued from the side of a basement ramp when he was palm-sized. Oreo, the middle child, was once a hungry kitty crying in my parents’ workplace parking lot. Yolk is our newest addition, a kitten we found this past summer during a night stroll downstairs from our building.
So, when I came to college in the United States, I felt a mystifying absence. Around the 5Cs, I saw none of the stray felines I was used to — where had they gone?
I initially assumed America had fewer unsheltered animals, but a quick Google search led me to examine the complicated details of the country’s animal-control systems. I discovered that there are tens of millions of outdoor cats in the U.S. While these shelters and programs face economic problems, there is at least a system in place to catch animals that fall through the cracks.
My cats are living reminders of this missing structure in China. They were not “adopted” in the American sense of the word, but found on the streets. There are far fewer animal rehoming facilities in China, with most of the responsibility falling to ordinary animal lovers working around structural constraints.
I grew up around casual violence and neglect towards stray cats inside my apartment complex. Residents in my community — primarily middle-aged women — communicate online about their stray cat care efforts. I recall chaos erupting in the neighborhood group chat one day when a woman was physically attacked by angry men as she went around our neighborhood feeding strays. They had been stalking her, even mixing poison into the kibble. The police arrived, but left abruptly without much seeming to change.
In particular, I remember one orange-and-white cat who loved winding his striped tail around our legs whenever we would stop to pet him. He would follow us on our journey through the roads, staring at us from a distance as we went home. Then, one day, he disappeared.
My mother drove past the place we used to see him and began sobbing uncontrollably. She wondered what kind of ending could have been forced upon a cat who had done nothing but trust the people around him.
I wondered why disdainful attitudes toward stray cats have seeped into the cracks of Chinese society for so long.
Part of the answer may lie in how China’s relationship with pets has changed dramatically within just a few generations. Not long ago, China was overwhelmingly agrarian, and animals were woven into everyday life for their utility, like cats catching pests. Then, during the Cultural Revolution, having household pets was condemned as a bourgeois indulgence. Today, the pendulum has swung in the other direction.
Pet cats have become increasingly popular among China’s urban middle class, and certain breeds can carry their own cachet, becoming markers of affluence. The new relationship with pets can be conditional — I have seen Ragdoll cats on the streets with their long coats matted and tangled.
This may explain why Chinese law protects certain categories of animals, but companion animals generally remain treated as property rather than as victims of cruelty. For a stray cat with no owner, there are no policies against mistreatment.
In thinking about what happens to cats who fall outside the structures of protection, I noticed something even more tragic about the issue.
In recent years, journalists and animal-rights investigators have documented networks that circulate videos of cats being tortured and killed, including sexualized content for men. These networks produce and distribute such material across the globe, with much of it originating from networks in China.
“Beyond the actual brutality, I can’t ignore the troubling social dynamics that may surround this persistent violence. Investigations have documented hostility toward cat lovers, particularly women, as well as possible overlaps between some cat-abuse communities and misogynistic subcultures.”
I recoil at the thought of the violence that has claimed the lives of countless cats. Beyond the actual brutality, I can’t ignore the troubling social dynamics that may surround this persistent violence. Investigations have documented hostility toward cat lovers, particularly women, as well as possible overlaps between some cat-abuse communities and misogynistic subcultures.
Activists argue that some consumers may be motivated by resentment toward women and therefore a desire to harm cats — an animal associated with feminine traits — paralleling the grievance found in incel ideology.
This disturbed me, yet, I was unsurprised. I still remember being a middle schooler talking about how cute cats are — only to be hollered at and berated by male peers who jokingly told me that they drowned cats in rivers for fun.
Yet the misogyny attached to cats is not exclusive to China. I began to notice subtler versions of the same gendered contempt in the Western world I now live in. In China, I watched women who feed stray cats become targets of ridicule and violence. In America, I located misogyny in stereotypes like the “crazy cat lady.”
It’s difficult to think of stray cats as simply strays — they sit at the intersection of care and neglect, affection and status, vulnerability and violence.
Sometimes I look wistfully at my cats, thinking about how much their lives have depended on the circumstances they were born into. The stories of stray cats in China are ultimately entangled with culture, class, gender, law and the people who choose to care for them.
Perhaps that is reason enough to think more carefully about how every life around us is treated.
Rochelle Lu SC ’28 is from Shanghai, China and Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Her family feeds stray cats on a regular basis, a practice she hopes to upkeep on her own in the future.
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