Pet lovers stop trucks carrying cats

A group of local animal lovers stopped three trucks laden with more than 150 cats in Jiading district Sunday morning, preventing the cats from being sold to restaurants in Guangdong Province, a member of the group said.

More than 50 local animal lovers gathered at the intersection of Boyuan and Fengdong roads in Jiading district to block the driveway to a site where cats are sent before they are transported to Guangdong, said Cheng Jihao, a local pet lover who helped stop the trucks.

"The young people parked their cars in the middle of the driveway, preventing the trucks from leaving," Cheng told the Global Times.

Xu Bo, a press officer with Jiading district police, confirmed that they had received a report of such an incident, but said that officers did not have the authority to stop the cats from being transported or sold. "We dispatched officers to the site and tried to solve the dispute between the two parties. The people transporting the cats gave in and agreed to give the cats to the animal lovers," Xu told the Global Times.

Cheng said that a member of the group discovered the site after he came across a truck full of cats on Qilianshan Road South in Putuo district early in the morning.

He then followed the truck to the site in Jiading district.

"The back of the truck was covered with a block cloth, but we could hear the cats. The cats had been packed into iron cages. There were 10 cages at the site, each holding 15 to 18 cats. There was barely enough room for them to move around," Cheng said.

The cats are usually sold for 20 yuan ($3.20) to 25 yuan each in Shanghai, Cheng said. They are then sold to food markets in Guangdong for 36 yuan per kilogram.

There are several sites in Shanghai where cats are sold, said Lai Xiaoyu, a member of the Shanghai Small Animal Protection Association.

Only a fraction of those cats are sold to local food markets. Most are sent to Guangdong where there is a tradition of eating cats.

Several animal lovers have taken the cats back to their homes and will care for them until they can be adopted.