This week: Strays
After years of living in Happy Valley and heavy suburbia, I decided last year to move to a more rural lifestyle in Sai Kung with my whole family of pets. The air was fresher and it was infinitely quieter, and I certainly don't miss the noise of rattling trams in Happy Valley.
I was pretty sure my dogs would benefit from having more space, but to my surprise, my cats seem to enjoy it even more, having discovered the roof and balconies, and the joys of sunbaking and chasing butterflies. Luckily for the butterflies, my cats are rather poor hunters and lose interest rather quickly.
When I first moved in, there were two or three stray cats in the village. They were skinny and looked rather wild. I noticed there was one ginger cat with a white head. It was a strange pattern and made this cat rather memorable.
As the weeks passed, I noticed foam lunchboxes discreetly placed around the stormwater drains where the cats hide.
At first, I thought it was just some good Samaritan that didn't want a lunchbox to go to waste, but after a few more weeks, I found it odd that these lunchboxes would persist in the same spots. On closer inspection a few days later, I noticed cat food in the lunchboxes. Unless the nearby cafe was experimenting with its customers, I thought someone in our village was actively feeding stray cats.