A difficult decision

Last Friday, we had an outing to a place we called “The Cat Factory”.

No, it is not a factory that processes cats (KFC, anyone?).  It is a toy-manufacturing factory owned by a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend (or something like that).  The owners are open to the possibility of taking our three cats, when we leave China in October of this year.  Basically, our cats could live in and around the buildings, and have a free run inside the gated area.  There is already one cat and a few dogs living there.  The cook puts food out for the animals, and the animals come and take it as they choose.

The Cat Factory is about two and a half hours away from our home (by metro then bus), so it was a long journey to go there, look around, then come home.

The factory is a pretty typical gated zone of low buildings of a few stories high, with concreted driveways, all surrounded by a high brick wall and secured with a metal sliding gate.  The only greenery I saw inside was a few low, skinny trees growing in dirt circles cut into the driveway concrete.  There are dorm buildings for the local workers, housing for the foreigners, a production area, an office area, kitchens and canteens for the workers, and a guardhouse at the entrance.

We were shown around by one of the staff.  She said that she hadn’t seen the cat for several days.  They think it may have got outside when the gate was open, then not come back again.

The question is whether we want to send our three cats to somewhere like that.  And our answer is, “not really.”  They won’t be pets there, and if they got lost no one would search for them.  Kitty might survive there, but we worry that Maggie and Mickey would get depressed and curl up in a corner and starve themselves to death.

So, we are still trying to find a more suitable cat home.  And it really is hard to find anyone willing to take even one of the cats.

If we can’t find anywhere suitable, we are asking ourselves whether we should take them to New Zealand with us.

Moving the cats to New Zealand is time consuming, complicated and expensive.  New Zealand doesn’t accept pets directly from Mainland China, so they must spend six months in Hong Kong first.  They need vet checks and injections.  A friend of a friend is connected with a pet-moving business, so we can pay them to do the organising for us.  In total, we expect it will cost us around 60,000 to 70,000 RMB for the three cats.

That is a lot of money!

To put it in perspective, our recent five-week holiday to Europe cost us about 60,000 RMB.

Now, we can afford it.  But it is a big chunk of money for us.  It would probably mean putting off our next overseas trip for a bit.

So, the question we are now asking ourselves is whether we should spend that amount of money for the sake of three cats.

It is a tough one.

As Nainai said, we cannot take our money with us when we die.  We all have to choose what to do with the money that we have.  It is a choice that Mama and I have to make about the values that we have in life.  (And in the end it will be Mama’s decision, because she is the money-earner in the family; I can only advise.)

We will continue to look for a nice home for the cats here in China.  That is the first priority.  But if we are going to send the cats to New Zealand, we should make a decision within the next couple of months.  They should be sent to Hong Kong early enough so that we can visit them occasionally while we are still here in China.