Houtong, Taiwan's Cat Village

As promised in my post about the Ping Hsi Branch Railway Line I will now show you around in some of the stops along the way.

There are several stops and your ticket allows you to hop on and of the train whenever wherever you like.

The scenery is pretty everywhere along this railway. There are hiking possibilities in abundance. Small towns, suspension bridges, waterfalls, mining history, cats, lanterns and much more. Take your pick!

We chose for just a couple of stops, to begin with Houtong aka Cat Village.

You understand that for a cat lover like myself, I just HAD to visit this little town!

Houtong once was one of the biggest coal-mining sites in Taiwan. 
Around 1970 the population was 6.000 people. But around 1990 the coal-mining industry went into decline, leaving the town impoverished and with only a couple hundred of residents.

In 2008 that all changed, after a cat-lover took pictures of the town's round roaming felines. He was concerned for their well-being and posted the pictures on the web and on social media. This did not only lead to responses from caring cat lovers from around the world, but also to more and more tourists coming to Houtong to see this cat community.

The locals soon realized that the cats and cat tourism offered opportunities for them. The cats are now well taken care of, monitored, fed...

A local feeding some cats.

.....and the town has been 'cattified', so to speak. Meaning: walls, paths and the footbridge have been beautified in cat-themed style. 

Houtong cattified maps.

A huge cat on the roof.

A whole cat industry has sprung up. You can buy cat-shaped pineapple cakes, cat postcards, and...well....basically every imaginable knick-knack in cat-form is for sale in Houtong.

Yes, we bought some souvenirs too;-). We bought the pineapple cakes and some postcards.

Tourists can buy toys, to play with the cats they encounter. As they can also buy cat food and lure them with food.

The cats are facilitated well. There is a passageway/footbridge that they can use to go to the other side of the tracks safely. 

There are shelves and cathouses where the cats can rest and sleep. And there are food bowls for the felines everywhere.

The whole footbridge is shaped like a grey cat, with ears at the front and a tail at the other end. Tourists can sit inside the footbridge, to rest and to hope for cat encounters there.

Inside the footbridge there are shelves and food bowls for the cats.

Little cat houses.

Food galore for Houtong's cats;-).

As I said, it was extremely crowded, the saturday that we took this scenic railway and visited Houtong's cats. 
This sometimes led to funny situations  in which a single cat could find dozens of tourists flocking around him or her. Understandably most of the cats were totally stoic and ignored their audience completely. Unless.....there was food involved, of course...hahaha...

Young tourists feeding a cat.

Other young tourists feeding a kitten. Uh...two kittens.  Oops, three....no, five cats/kittens.

Asians always, really always, seem to have to make the V-sign or peace-sign when they have their picture taken. This one had to do that behind the cat's head. As I said, the cat kept totally stoic and could not be bothered;-). Playing cool...hahaha.

Left: yeah, you kneel for me, you human. I will just keep ignoring you.
Right: you can flock around me with your designer bags all you want, but I am staying here.

Is it all and only about cats then, in Houtong? And is this an 'all's well that ends well' story?

No and no, not completely....

To answer the first question:
to be honest, yes, it is mainly cats that you encounter in Houtong, besides the locals and hundreds of other tourists. But there is the occasional dog and some rabbits;-).

This tourist is carrying his small dog in his arms. Seems like a smart idea, with all those cats around!

But let's not forget the town's history: the mining industry. There are some ruins left, and there is a small museum with scale models, pictures and explanations.

And besides the cats and the mining history, there is ofcourse the beautiful nature around, so you can go trekking and hiking as well.

How about all's well that ends well?
Well, I saw some examples of cats and kittens in cages that made me less happy.

At this place there is a whole load of connected cages with kittens inside. The cages are rusty, dirty and smelly and the cats have to live straight on the bars. It looks bad and sad.

This kitten at least looks in good condition and it's cage looks clean. Many passers by played with it through the bars.

Also some Taiwanese see a chance to get rid of their no longer wanted house cats. They go to Houtong and just drop them there, thinking that the local community will take care of them. 
This creates all sorts of problems, cost-wise and cat-health-wise in the first places.

Although Houtong is super touristic, we still enjoyed it. Maybe more by seeing it as a curiosity;-). 

I guess that on a less busy and less hot day, you may see much more cats. And then you would also be able to have more relaxed, better photo ops then we did.

But again, we had a good time there! And as for the locals, I would say that they shifted from 'coal mining' to 'cats as their goldmine'.