Houtong Cat Village, Taiwan

Jun 9, 2013 23 comments

Houtong is a small mining town located in Rueifang District of Taiwan, a district renowned for its rich, well-preserved railway culture with the old Yilan Line which was built during the Japanese colonial period for transporting resources out of northern Taiwan. Houtong was a train stop on the Yilan Line and one of Taiwan’s biggest coal-mining sites up until the 1970s. During its most prosperous years, Houtong’s mines produced some 220,000 tons of coal, the largest amount of coal yielded in a single area in Taiwan. This attracted many residents to migrate to Houtong, and the town grew to as many as 900 households and population of more than 6,000.

As the coal mining industry began to fall into decline in 1990, development in Houtong became progressively worse. Young residents started to move out of town to look for other opportunities, and only a few hundred residents remained. The once prosperous mining industry fell into ruins and was lying so for decades.

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Things took an unexpected turn sometime around 2008, when a cat lover organized a team of volunteers to give the neighborhood’s abandoned cats a better living environment. They posted the cats’ pictures on the web and received an overwhelming response from other cat lovers. Visitors' raves on local blogs drew more cat lovers to this place who came to photograph the cats or fondle and frolic with them. Soon Houtong became a hotbed for cat lovers and amateur photographers. Today, the dilapidated mining town and the 100-odd felines that roam the streets are drawing thousands of tourists during weekends.

Houtong residents are cashing in on the tourist influx by opening souvenir shops and selling cat-shaped pineapple pastries. Even the footbridge leading from the station’s exit across the tracks to the hillside cat village has recently been beautified and given a distinct “cat-look,” complete with ears at one end and a tail at the other. The bridge now even includes an elevated “catwalk,” allowing the cats to come down from the village and greet visitors who arrive by train.

The cats are looked after by the town’s residents. Chan Bi-yun, a 58-year-old retiree takes a lot of the credit for Houtong's feline-induced rebirth.

"I started raising five cats that belonged to a neighbor who passed away nine years ago and they gave birth to more and more kitties," she said. "Now I feed about half of Houtong's cat population."

Also see: Tashirojima - The Cat Island of Japan

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Houtong was originally called Hou Dong, that literally translates to “monkey cave”, because there was a cave inhabited by a group of wild monkeys in the area during the early days. This sign is located in Houtong’s railway station. The doodle of a cat, a miner, a monkey and a railway bridge indicates the four major attraction in Houtong. Photo credit

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Sources: CNN, Taiwan.net, Eturbonews, NTPC, Culture.tw

Comments

  1. It's beautiful however I'm sure there would be very few birds in this town - and of course, no mice!

    I hope they spay and neuter these cats so they don't quickly overpopulate and create an untenable situation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Spay and neuter is really a must for a sustainable situation. Totally agree with you.

      Delete
    2. I also agree, but as a resident of Taiwan, I can unfortunately tell you that they don't. Animals are treated like dolls here and often abandoned promptly when they act like animals. So consequently, along with an exceptionally high number of both stray cats and dogs, the country has one of the largest animal shelters in the world just outside Taipei. I really can't understand how spaying and neutering aren't more important in Taiwan.

      Delete
    3. Don't fret, there's always flaying and sauteing, the asian alternative to spaying and neutering

      Delete
    4. Actually, a lot of them have been desexed; it is a recent-ish initiative by volunteers around the city, including vets, that come to the village, catch and desex the cats before releasing them back into the streets.

      And not all 'Asians' are the same which makes stentor's comment ridiculously ignorant.

      Delete
  2. I love this village, I wish I could go and see it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you for this beautiful article! Care2 shared it with members. I hope many more people get to see and hear about this magnificent feline paradise where compassion and ingenuity collide to show the very best of humanity interacting with cats and enjoying each other as God intended.

    Regarding the "bird" comment above, whatever. The cats are being fed by humans. I'm sure the birds are fine.

    ReplyDelete
  4. cats like to play, especially when they are well fed. and playing often means hunting down smaller animals. the corpses are not eaten by the cat, but are brought home as presents. so, a cats´ village surely is a death zone for birds and mice.

    although i liked the photos very much, i also hope that they spay and neuter or the situation will soon be not idyllic anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  5. молодцы! вот так с помощью животных можно победить хандру.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Meawwww meawwww.

    No spay or neutering. The plan is to let them multiply. More cats = more moneys!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I don't think the cats, once fully tamed, would wander too far away from this particular village - thus, there is little danger to ecosystem outside it. They find food from people that feed them. After all, cats often tend to be fond of the particular place where they live.

    I never liked the idea of neutering or spay. That shit is fucked up :/

    ReplyDelete
  8. I've been to this village and I have to say that the cats here are very friendly. Interestingly enough they are very clean and healthy. The Taiwanese govt provide fundings for the village to take care of the cats which includes shots and food. The cats should be fixed as the village is literally overrun with them and there are signs warning against people leaving their cats there. Petting the cats is also not recommended as they have very potent pesticides which keeps away ticks and other parasites.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wow. This place is amazing. It's so nice to see feline and human live in peace and harmony. I'd love to visit the village one day! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  10. I wish i can visit the village but im too far away!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. As a cat lover, I find this both amazing and very attractive. We will definitely plan to go there on our next visit to Taiwan. Seems like heaven for cat lovers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just went there today, and as a cat lover I can confirm, it is in fact, HEAVEN.

      Delete
  12. The fabricated paradise

    Houtong, a remote village situated in northern Taiwan.
    A so called “cat paradise”.
    The first time I went to Houtong, was back in the December of 2011. I was very looking forward to the trip, because I read a book that has describe Houtong as a “cat paradise”, all the cats are all live very healthy and free in such dream world.
    To think there is such place in the world for cats, bring smile to my face.
    Too bad, it is nothing but a wishful thinking.

    The cute cat in the photo is Butter. Of course it’s because the buttery colour of his fur. He used to hang around the Houtong train station.
    However, in March of 2012, he got ill. I notice it when he vomited the canned cat food I feed him.
    I reported his bad condition to the author of the book that brought me to Houtong, who also the chairwoman of the official Houtong cats society, and urge them bring Butter to vet.
    Instated of took it as a serious matter, the chairwoman simply told me, “Butter is great, no need to worry about it”, which I find very difficult to believe.
    So I decided to act on the best interest of Butter and bring him to vet, where I know the seriousness of Butter’s condition.
    The vet inform me that Butter has eosinophilic stomatitis and has to take the medication for the rest of his life, which can only stabilize his condition.

    ReplyDelete
  13. IF the government is so wonderful to take care of these cats, why aren't they spaying and neutering them, so they will not be overrun by heavy population, disease, killed by cars and the risk of too many too feed any longer and then they are just abandoned to fend for themselves. This is a nice village if this is all true and the cats are well fed, but overpopulation is NOT a good thing.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Visited this place in november and it was a very positive experience.

    It's neither overpopulated by cats nor dirty. Every single cat I saw there was very well cared of and clean.

    One may add that this place was very run down after mining shut down and it took a very positive development.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Just visited cat village with my two kiddos last week. What a fun and cute little town. The cats are pretty friendly. We had a great time feeding the cats, eating cat shaped pineapple cakes and riding the little train through the old mining cave. Would definitely return again the next time we go to Taipei.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I visited on July 9, 2016. Most of the cats that I saw were in fact spayed or neutered. It was easy to tell because most cats I saw had the tip of one ear clipped off. We visited the cat clinic and asked about the ears, and the receptionist said that they clip the tip of the left ear when a female cat is spayed and the tip of the right ear when a male cat is neutered. Or maybe I got the ears backwards. Anyway, if you know the code, you can tell whether a Houtong cat had been spayed or neutered, and if so, you can tell the sex from a distance!

    On our visit we did see a few cats that didn't look very healthy.

    The pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks is now much fancier than the one shown in the photo in this article.

    ReplyDelete

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